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OUR NEW EDENS 



Gbe Presbyterian pulpit 



OUR NEW EDENS 



BY 

J. R. MILLER 

Author of "Week-Day Religion," "Wedded Life," 
" Silent Times," etc., etc. 



Go ye, and stand and speak in tna temple to the people ,' /, 
all the words of this Life." 



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PHILADELPHIA 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 

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|THt LIBRARY Or 
CONGRESS, 

Two Ct>Wc8 RfcCfcfVED 

OCT ,9 1903 

Copyright entry 
CLASS ct^XXix No. 



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Copyright, 1903, by 
J . R . MILLER. 

Published October, iqo3. 



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CONTENTS 



I. Our New Edens 

II. The Way to God . 

III. Prayer in the Christian Life 

IV. A Parable of Growth 

V. The Beauty of Quietness 

VI. The Name on the Forehead . 

VII. The True Glory of Life 

VIII. Grieving the Holy Spirit 



PAGE 

• 3 

• 23 
. 43 

• 63 
■ 83 
. 103 

• 123 
. 141 



The Scripture quotations in this volume are from the American 
Revision. 



OUR NEW EDENS 



" And Jehovah God took the man, and put him into the garden 
of Eden to dress it and to keep it." — Genesis ii. 15. 

" We cannot go so far 

That home is out of sight — 
The morn, the evening star, 

Will say, < Good day ! Good night ! ' " 

— Henry Burton. 



OUR NEW EDENS 



OUR NEW EDENS 

The first home there ever was in this world 
was in the garden of Eden. God the Father 
made it ready for His first children — made it 
ready for them before they were created. I can 
imagine with what loving thought He prepared 
this home for them. He made it very beautiful. 
He gathered into it all the loveliest things of all 
the earth — trees, plants, flowers, and fruits. 
Streams of water rippled through it and there 
were birds and animals of all kinds in it. 

The first home was a garden. Every home 
should be a garden spot. An important part of 
our work in this world is garden-making. We 
ought to make our homes as beautiful as we can. 
They may be very plain, perhaps only two or 
three rooms, but we should put into them all the 
lovely things we can gather. The first home in 
this world was in Eden. We should try to make 

3 



4 OUR NEW EDENS 

our homes Edens. One writes of a quiet man 
who had given his life to a service of love : — 

In the desert, where he lies entombed, 
He made a little garden, and left there 
Some flowers that but for him had never bloomed. 

Every home should be such a garden. Whether 
it is a luxurious place or bare of earthly comforts, 
it should be sweet with the fragrance of love and 
beautiful with the beauty of the Lord. 

The home has always been dear to the Divfne 
heart. When Jesus sent His disciples out to 
preach, one of His instructions was, " Into what- 
soever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this 
house." On Christ's lips this is more than a 
salutation : it is a divine benediction as well. 
Peace means love, heaven's love, the absence of 
all strife and bitterness. It means also the 
absence of care and worry. The New Testament 
tells us of the home at Bethany where Jesus 
Himself was welcomed by the sisters. He left 
peace there. He taught the lesson of quietness 
and confidence. One of the sisters was disposed 
to worry — it is not easy to be a housekeeper, to 
have to provide for the wants of a family, and to 
manage all the domestic affairs of a home and not 
sometimes fret a little. Martha was anxious and 



OUR NEW EDENS 5 

troubled about many things. But Jesus gently 
taught her the lesson of peace, and we may be 
quite sure she never forgot it. We never find her 
worrying any more. 

Jesus comes to the door of each home of ours 
and says, " Peace be to this house." We should 
let the messenger of peace come in. Nothing 
good ever comes of fretting. We cannot get 
clear of cares. There are troubles enough in any 
of our lives to spoil our happiness if we yield to 
them. But no matter what comes, what burdens 
press, what things go wrong, what flowers fade, 
listen to the Master's word at the door, " Peace 
be to this house." 

"He who waters meadow lilies 

With the dew from out the sky; 
He who feeds the flitting sparrows 

When in need of food they cry, 
Never fails to help His children 

In all things, both great and small ; 
For His ear is ever open 

To our faintest far-off call." 

How can we make new Edens of our homes ? 
What are some of the secrets of home happiness ? 
I might gather them all into one word and say — 
Christ. If we have Christ as our guest, our home 
will be happy — Christ in the joy and Christ in the 
sorrow ; Christ in the day of plenty and Christ in 



6 OUR NEW EDENS 

the day of pinching want ; Christ in the business 
and Christ in the social life ; Christ at the mar- 
riage altar and Christ as the wedded pair walk 
together toward the sunset gate. Christ makes a 
happy home when He is admitted into all the 
household life. 

The other day a young friend who is to be a 
bride in a little while came to have a quiet talk 
about her new life. She has never confessed 
Christ as her Master and Friend, and she said she 
wanted to do it soon, adding : " We never know 
what trouble we may have and when we may 
need Christ. I want to take Him now into my 
new life and into my home. ,, She is doing right, 
but her thought of the possible need for Christ 
reveals a mistaken conception of His mission to 
us. Christ is not needed merely in the days of 
trouble. Religion is not meant to be a lamp for 
the sick room or for the days when the shutters 
are bowed and there is crape on the door. It is 
for the sunny days as well. Christ's first public 
act after His baptism was His attendance at a 
wedding-feast. He would come into all our 
experiences of gladness as well as into our times 
of care or trial. Our joy needs heaven in it quite 
as much as our sorrow does. 

It is more of Christ we need in our homes to 



OUR NEW EDENS 7 

make their happiness perfect. One of Turner's 
pictures was being exhibited in the artist's studio. 
It was rich and beautiful. But those who were 
present that day saw that it lacked something. 
It seemed all mist and cloud — hazy, vague, ill- 
defined, incomprehensible. The friends who 
looked at the canvas were perplexed — they could 
not understand the picture. The artist himself 
saw the lack, and, taking his brush, added a touch 
of red to his painting. That took away all the 
mystery, the vagueness, the mistiness, and made 
it intelligible. 

Some of our homes seem to have in them 
everything they need to make them perfect. 
They are filled with beauty. They have all the 
equipments and conveniences of modern taste 
and skill. Music and art and refinement and the 
best things that money can add are present. 
Health and happiness and the gladness of social 
life yield their portion to the comfort of these 
homes. But something is yet wanting to make 
the picture complete. It is Christ's " Peace be to 
this house." It is a touch of the red of Christ's 
cross — His love shed abroad in the home-life. 
If Christ w r ere admitted as a guest, His coming 
would add immeasurably to the joy and sweet- 
ness of the home-life. 



8 OUR NEW EDENS 

But there is only one way of taking Christ into 
our homes and getting His blessing on our home- 
life. In olden days there would be a little chapel 
in great castles where God was formally honored 
on Sundays, while He was shut out of all the life 
of other days. Not thus can we take Christ into 
our homes. He will not come to be a secluded 
guest, merely to lodge in loneliness in our best 
room. He must be welcomed into all our life. 
He must be in each heart. He must sit at our 
tables and mingle with us in all our intercourse. 
Christ can bless our home only through the lives 
of those who make the home circle. 

The husband has a part in making the earthly 
home a little garden of Eden. He must be a 
good man. He need not be rich, nor brilliant, 
nor famous, nor clever, but he must be good. 
He must always be a lover — even to his old age. 
Then he must be a man — manly, brave, true, 
generous, worthy of honor. He must be a man 
of unblemished life. He must be a man who 
loves his home and lives for it. The husband has 
an important part in the home garden-making. 
Some husbands seem not to know this ; at least 
they fail to take their share of the burden. 

The wife too has a responsibility. The word 
" wife " is suggestive. Some lexicographers 



OUR NEW EDENS 9 

would connect it with " weave." In olden days 
the wife's hands wove the garments her husband 
wore. This is not the case now, but the wife does 
weave the garments of her husband's prosperity. 
Most men who amount to anything worth while 
confess that they owe it all to their wives. Jeremy 
Taylor's tribute to a true wife is very beautiful, 
but as true as beautiful, though it sets a high 
ideal : " A good wife is heaven's best gift to man, 
his angel and minister of graces innumerable, his 
gem of many virtues, his casket of jewels." 

The wife is the real home-maker. It is her 
sweet life that gives the home its atmosphere. 
Her hands fashion its beauty. Her heart makes 
its love. And the end is so worthy, so noble, so 
divine, that no woman called to be a wife should 
consider any price too great to pay that she may 
be the light, the joy, the blessing, the inspiration, 
of her home. I know how some good mothers 
sometimes feel — that it is only a dull, dreary, 
routine life they are living. They contrast it 
with the lives of certain women who are achiev- 
ing distinction in other lines, winning honors, 
doing work which the world praises, and some- 
times they feel that their lives are humdrum and 
insignificant in comparison. But the woman who 
makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love, 



io OUR NEW EDENS 

prayer, and song, is doing something better than 
anything else her hands could find to do any- 
where beneath the blue skies. 

" * My day has all gone ' — 'twas a woman who spoke, 
As she turned her face to the sunset glow — 
* And I have been busy the whole day long ; 
Yet for my work there is nothing to show.' 

" No painting nor sculpture her hand had wrought ; 
No laurel of fame her labor had won. 
What was she doing in all the long day, 
With nothing to show at set of sun ? ' ' 

You know what she was doing — kindly things 
all the day long, trifles, perhaps, but trifles that 
left blessings everywhere. She had put benedic- 
tions into her husband's heart as he went forth in 
the morning to his work. She had brought 
heaven down about her children's lives as she 
prayed with them. She had left touches of beauty 
in every part of her home as she went about her 
task-work. She had kept sweet amid all the 
home care and turmoil. She had found time to 
go out to carry to a sick neighbor or to a home 
of sorrow, comfort and cheer. 

" Humbly and quietly all the long day 

Had her sweet service for others been done ; 
Yet for the labors of heart and of hand 
What could she show at set of sun ? 



OUR NEW EDENS u 

" Ah, she forgot that our Father in heaven 
Ever is watching the work that we do, 
And records He keeps of all we forget, 

Then judges our work with judgment that's true; 

" For an angel writes down in a volume of gold 
The beautiful deeds that all do below. 
Though nothing she had at set of the sun, 
The angel above had something to show." 

Children, when they come, are also important 
factors in making the happiness of the home. 
They bring care, and demand toil and sacrifice, 
and cost ofttimes pain and grief; yet the blessing 
they bring to a true home repays a thousand 
times the care and cost. 

One of the holiest secrets of home happiness is 
a true mother. God sends many beautiful things 
to this world, many noble gifts ; but no blessing 
He ever gives is richer than that which He be- 
stows in a mother who has learned love's lesson 
well and understands something of the meaning 
of her sacred calling. One writes : — 

"God thought to give the sweetest thing 

In His almighty power 
To earth ; and deeply pondering 

What it should be, one hour 
In fondest joy and love of heart 

Outweighing every other, 
He moved the gates of heaven apart 

And gave to earth a mother." 



12 OUR NEW EDENS 

A father also has his share in the making of 
the Eden home. It is not fair to put all the 
responsibility for the home-life on the mother. 
Fathers cannot evade their duty in this regard 
without lack of faithfulness and also of chivalrous 
conduct. God will call them to answer for their 
part of the responsibility. Then it is not manly 
for a man to try to roll the whole burden on her 
whom he sometimes twits with being the " weaker 
vessel.'' If the wife is we^k and he is so strong, 
then — noblesse oblige. Let him bear the strong 
man's part of the load. No doubt there are parts 
of the home duty which a mother can do far 
better than a father. Men's hands are awkward 
and clumsy, and a woman's hands are gentle and 
deft in love's arts. But let no man cherish the 
notion that he has nothing to do in this home 
garden-making. His strong life should be the 
secure shelter beneath which his wife and chil- 
dren may safely abide. His character and dispo- 
sition should be a continual revealing of the love 
and holiness of God. 

Brothers and sisters also have their part in 
making the home happiness. Sometimes they 
forget this. Some young people do not add to 
the joy and the sweetness of the home in which 
they have been brought up as they might do. 



OUR NEW EDENS 13 

They do not give to their parents the comfort and 
cheer they might give. They do not remember 
and practice the fifth commandment. Then they 
do not live together sweetly as they might do, 
adding to the music of the home. Children carry 
in their hands the happiness of their parents. We 
talk of the responsibility of parenthood — did you 
ever think of the responsibility of children for 
their parents ? In this home garden-making every 
child has a share. 

The artist was painting a picture of a dead 
mother, and was using a photograph as his copy. 
But to make the face look fresher and younger, 
he was leaving out the lines and marks of age 
and care on the face. " No, no," said the son. 
" Don't take out the lines. Leave them, every 
one. It wouldn't be my mother if all the lines 
were gone." Then he told the story of her devo- 
tion to her children through their infancy and 
through times of sickness. The lines which 
seemed to disfigure the face were love's records, 
telling of sacrifice and suffering. We should 
never forget what we owe to our mothers. 

Then may I say a special word about children's 
thought for their fathers ? Mothers are idealized 
much oftener and with more just recognition and 
praise than fathers. More children pay honor 



14 OUR NEW EDENS 

and love and attention to mothers than to fathers. 
Of course, mothers do more for children than 
fathers do — suffer more, are gentler and sweeter, 
give more thought and time and strength to them, 
and deserve more in return. We are not in danger 
of ever overdoing our gratitude to our mothers or 
of showing them too much kindness. But fathers 
also hunger for love from their children. Max 
O'Rell has a strong word somewhere about the 
beauty of a daughter's attention and devotion to 
her father, saying also that such love and appre- 
ciation are rare. Love your mother and give her 
high honor, but do not forget that you can give 
your father great joy by being kind to him. He 
loves you too and has lived for you all the years. 
He needs your affection and will be cheered by 
your thoughtfulness and attention. 

I want to say some earnest words about the 
home-life we must live if we are to make our 
homes little gardens of Eden. As in everything, 
love is the great master secret of home happiness. 
When love is left out, the peace is broken. We 
must remember too that love needs expression. 
There are men who love their wives and would 
die for them, but who are not always gentle and 
kind to them. There are wives who love their 
husbands, but say little about it and do not take 



OUR NEW EDENS 15 

pains to show it. There is need for love that is 
affectionate, thoughtful, fond in its expression. 
Bring your flowers while they will do good and 
do not keep them for the day of the funeral. 

"You placed this flower in her hand, you say, 
This pure, pale rose in her hand of clay ? 
Methinks, could she lift her sealed eyes, 

They would meet your own with grieved surprise. 

****** 
When did you give her a flower before ? 
Ah, well, what matter, when life is o'er? 

****** 

But I pray you think 
That love will starve if it is not fed — 
That true hearts pray for their daily bread. " 

Parents cannot think too seriously of what they 
should try to make their homes for the sake of 
their children. They are given to us in tender 
infancy to be brought up by us for worthy, beau- 
tiful lives. It is our duty to teach them and train 
them so that they shall be ready by and by for 
the positions in life they may be called to fill. 
The place of the home-life among the educational 
influences which help to mold and shape 
character is supreme in its importance. It is not 
enough to have a good house to live in. It is not 
enough to have fine carpets, and handsome furni- 
ture and pictures, and bric-a-brac, and musical 



1 6 OUR NEW EDENS 

instruments, and to live off the best products of 
the fields and of the gardens. Most of the world's 
worthiest men and women, those who have 
blessed the world the most, were brought up in 
plain homes, without luxury. It is the tone of 
the home-life that is important. We should make 
it pure, elevating, refining, inspiring. The books 
we bring in, the papers and magazines, the guests 
we have at our tables and admit to our firesides, 
the home conversation, the pictures we hang on 
our walls — all these are educative. 

Then the religious influences are vitally im- 
portant. In that first garden home the Lord 
came and went as a familiar friend. Christ must 
be our guest if our home is to be a fit place either 
for our children or for ourselves. If no window 
opens into heaven, it is not a true home. If there 
is no prayer in it, it is not a home at all — it is 
only a heathen or atheistic lodging-place. 

A good man tells of going back to the home 
of his childhood and of being put to sleep in the 
spare room. Opening a closet, he saw an old 
stool there, faded and worn, and noticed espe- 
cially two deep dents in the cushion. Evidently 
they were dents made by a pair of knees. He 
understood at a glance. It was on that stool 
his mother had knelt daily through years as she 



OUR NEW EDENS 17 

prayed for her children, and prayed them one by 
one into the kingdom. There should be such a 
stool or spot in every home, where mothers and 
fathers bow morning and night to plead for their 
children. 

They say that family worship is falling into dis- 
use — going out of fashion. It is a great loss to 
the world if this is true. There is a story of one 
man whom his wife urged to begin family pray- 
ers. It was hard the first time. A Bible chapter 
had been read and the two were on their knees, 
but there was silence — the prayer did not begin. 
The wife at length cried out, " O God, give John 
a lift." The lift was given and the sealed lips 
were opened. It may not be easy to start family 
prayers, but if we try, God will give us a lift, and 
then great joy and good will follow. 

There are godly mothers who every day kneel 
by their children's sides and pray with them, and 
there is great power in a mother's prayer. One 
writes : — 

"When mother prayed, then all the air 
Grew tremulous with music rare ; 
Love's earnest pleading for its own 
Was wafted heavenward to the throne. 

* God bless my children ' — thus the prayer : 



1 8 OUR NEW EDENS 

" * Keep them unspotted everywhere 
O Father God ! ' In softest tone 
Echoed the whisper upward blown 
When mother prayed. 

" O dread the day when mother's prayer 
Breathes out no more her heart's fond care ; 
For blessings rich from heavenly zone 
Came angel -like from heights far flown, 
When mother prayed." 

We talk about the dangers of the street for our 
children, and God alone knows how real and how 
great the dangers are. What is the best way to 
save them from these perils ? We must do it in 
the home. There is a tendency to roll the 
responsibility for the religious care and protection 
of children over on the church. But we cannot 
evade our personal duty in this way. Parents are 
the first custodians of their children's lives. If 
they would meet their responsibility and be able 
to look God and their children in the face at the 
judgment, they must make their homes as nearly 
gardens of Eden as possible. The way to save 
the boys from the temptations of the streets is to 
make home so bright, so sweet, so beautiful, so 
happy, so full of love, joy, and prayer, that the 
streets will have no attractiveness for them, no 
power to win them away. " Overcome evil with 
good." 



OUR NEW EDENS 19 

" Come, let us live with our children," is the 
call of the new education. The parents who are 
ready to do this will not be sorry for it by and 
by. No other work we can do will yield larger 
returns. But there are some who do not care to 
devote themselves in this way to the teaching 
and training of their children. "It is too much 
trouble," they say. It is pathetic to think of how 
many children there are who are always in the 
way, whose noise always jars home nerves, who 
never get much love at home. 

Let us live with our children. Let us take 
them into our lives. Let us enter into their lives. 
The best thing a father can do for his boy is to 
be a boy again himself with him. The best thing 
a mother can do for her daughter is to be a girl 
again herself with her. There is no revival 
needed to-day quite so imperatively as a revival 
of sweet, beautiful homes that shall clutch the 
lives of the boys and girls in them with a clutch 
of love from which no power of temptation or of 
evil can ever tear them away. 

I call upon all parents who care to heed my 
pleading to begin to-day to make their homes 
more winning, more attractive, more happy, 
sweeter, heavenlier. Religion ? Yes, but not 
religion made somber or distasteful, so that your 



20 OUR NEW EDENS 

children will not be influenced by it. Make your 
religion sunny, cheerful, full of sympathy with 
child-life, glad, songful — a religion for boys and 
girls. There is no reason why religion in a home 
should not be winsome, just as the life of Christ 
was. Bring heaven down into your homes. Try 
to make such a home-life as must have been in 
Joseph's home at Nazareth when Jesus was a 
boy there. God has planted a new garden of 
Eden for you to dress and keep. Tend it well. 

There is an Eastern legend of a rose so sweet 
that "even the earth which lies round its roots 
becomes permeated with fragrance, and little bits 
of it are sold as amulets and worn by princes." 
Make your home so sweet, so heavenly, with love 
and prayer and song and holy living, that all 
about it there shall be the fragrance of the heart 
of Christ. 

Thus let us make our homes little Eden gar- 
dens, in which something of the beauty, the 
sweetness, and the joy of heaven shall be repro- 
duced on earth, to make the world believe in the 
home above in the Father's house, waiting for all 
the Master's friends. 



II 

THE WAY TO GOD 



" I am the way." — John xiv. 6. 

"O patient Love, that weariest not of me — 
Alone of all, Thou weariest not of me — 
Oh, bear with me till I am lost in Thee ; 
Oh, bear with me till I am found in Thee. 

" Speak to me out of the silences, Lord, 
That my spirit may know, 
As forward I go, 
That Thy pierced hands are lifting me over the ford." 
— Lauchlan Maclean Watt. 



II 

THE WAY TO GOD 

Jesus says He is the way to God. It is the 
figure of a road that is in His mind. He had 
spoken of going away to prepare a place for His 
disciples, adding that He would come again to 
receive them to Himself, that where He is they 
may be also. He then said further, " Whither I 
go, ye know the way." Thomas, whose faith was 
always slow, said, " Lord, we know not whither 
Thou goest ; how know we the way? " Jesus an- 
swered, " I am the way." The meaning of His 
reply was that it is not necessary to know every- 
thing or even anything about the details of the 
way. If we know Christ, if we are His, if we are 
following Him, that is enough ; we will then find 
the way. To be with Him is to be in the way, for 
He Himself is the way. 

It is very important that we should know the 
way to heaven. No one knows where heaven is. 
There have been guesses and speculations. A 
certain star is heaven, some have said to us. This 

23 



24 OUR NEW EDENS 

great universe, with its millions of worlds and sys- 
tems of worlds, astronomers tell us, is revolving 
round one center, one star in a certain constella- 
tion. That central star, they suggest, may be the 
place of the great white throne, the Father's 
house to which Jesus said He was going, whither 
He told His disciples they also should come when 
their work on earth was finished. 

But no one knows surely where heaven is, and 
no one knows the way there. You can find 
guides to show you the way through the cata- 
combs, or among the Alps, or amid the build- 
ings and ruins of ancient Rome, or across some 
deep, impenetrable forest. But when you come 
to die, and your spirit leaves your body, who will 
show you the way home to the Father's house ? 
And you never can get there alone without guid- 
ance. There are no maps or charts of the way. 

The question of Thomas seems proper enough : 
" How can we know the way ? " The answer of 
Jesus is full of comfort : " I am the way." We 
need not trouble ourselves with geographical 
or astronomical questions, nor try to find a chart 
of the road to heaven. If we are Christ's, no 
matter where we die, we shall find ourselves in 
the hands of our Saviour, and with Him will be 
in heaven. 



THE WAY TO GOD 25 

There is another need still more important than 
finding the way to heaven. We need to find the 
way to God. We never can get to heaven unless 
we have first got to God. Here, too, Jesus is the 
way. He said, " I am the way," and then He 
added, " No one cometh unto the Father, but by 
Me." To get to God is life's first and greatest 
need. Sin is absence from God. In a certain 
sense we never can get away from God. 

" Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? 
Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? " 

Wherever we turn God is. But in a moral and 
spiritual sense, only those who have repented and 
returned to God are near Him. In our sinful 
state we are in the " far country." We must get 
to God or we shall perish. The cry of the world 
in all ages has been, " Show us the Father." This 
is the interpretation of all heathen worship. Men 
everywhere have been groping in the darkness, 
trying to find God. Now Jesus says, " I am the 
way to the Father." 

He does not say, " I will show you the way." 
He does that too. He came to guide us in the 
way. He passed over this world, from the cradle 
to the gates of glory, and left His footprints 
wherever He went. In the early days of our 



26 OUR NEW EDENS 

country, when a pioneer went through a primeval 
forest, his the first feet to find their way, he would 
blaze his path with his ax on the trees, and then 
others coming after him could easily find the way. 
Jesus, in going through life, marked His way, and 
all who come after Him may see where He 
walked and follow Him. He never went on any 
wrong path. He never was misled. He marked 
out for us the way to God. 

But that is not what He says here. He says : 
" I am the way. I Myself am the way." The 
figure is very suggestive. Often the words of 
Christ invite us to Him as if we had to go a dis- 
tance, longer or shorter, to get to Him. He says, 
" Come unto Me." We see Him yonder, and He 
is wondrously gracious. But we must go on 
over the road that intervenes to reach Him. 
When we get there, we know He will receive us, 
welcome us, and bless us. But suppose we never 
get to Him ? Suppose we faint and fall by the 
way ? Yet now we learn that Christ is more than 
goal, that He does not fix a point at which He 
will meet us, that there is no long or even short 
space to cross over to get to His feet. He is the 
way as well as the goal. We have not even one 
step to take before we come to Him. 



THE WAY TO GOD 27 

" Thou art the way. 
Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal, 

I cannot say 
If thou hadst ever met my soul. 

" I cannot see — 
I, child of process — if there lies 

An end for me, 
Full of repose, full of replies. 

"I'll not reproach 
The way that goes, my feet that stir. 

Access, approach 
Art Thou, time, way, and wayfarer. " 

A beautiful story is told of Agassiz. When he 
was a boy his family lived on the edge of a lake 
in Switzerland. One day the father was on the 
other side of the lake, and Louis and a younger 
brother set out on the ice to join him. The 
mother watched the boys from her window. 
They got along well till they came to a wide 
crack in the ice. The taller boy leaped over 
easily, but the other hesitated. " The little fellow 
will fall in," the mother said, " and drown." But 
as she watched a moment she saw Louis, the 
older boy, get down on the ice, laying himself 
across the crack, his hands on one side and his 
feet on the other, making a bridge of his body. 
Then she saw the little fellow climb over him in 



28 OUR NEW EDENS 

safety to the other side, and both the boys run on 
to find their father. This illustrates what Jesus 
Christ did for us. There was a great chasm which 
sin had made between us and God. We could 
not cross that chasm ourselves. Our goodness 
never could reach to the Divine requirements. 
The holiest of us could never get to heaven by 
any obedience of our own. Then Jesus came 
and laid Himself down in love across the chasm, 
making of His own blessed life a bridge on which 
whosoever will may pass over into the presence 
and the joy of the Father. " I am the way." 

There are two other words here which help us 
to understand the meaning of this figure. Jesus 
said, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life/' 

" I am the truth." He does not say that He 
speaks the truth, reveals it. He did this. He 
was the most wonderful teacher the world ever 
heard. No man ever spoke as He did. His 
words are like stars shining in the world's dark- 
ness. We cannot begin to understand what the 
world owes to the teachings of Jesus. The great 
truths which mean so much, the truths about 
God's love, mercy, and goodness, seem so familiar 
to us that they are almost commonplace. Yet it 
was Jesus who first made known to the world 
these truths. Two thousand years ago nobody 



THE WAY TO GOD 29 

knew them. The earth lay in moral darkness 
then. Jesus was a great teacher of truth. 

But He does not say He is a revealer of the 
truth. " I am the truth " is the tremendous 
assertion. The truth was not merely spoken by 
His lips ; it was embodied in His person and in 
His life. He is the truth. This is more, too, 
than if He had said, " I am true." He was true — 
there was nothing false in Him, nothing insincere. 
He never professed to be what He was not. He 
never put forth claims which He did not fulfill. 
He never made promises which He did not keep. 
Not one word He ever spoke has failed or will 
fail. Many good people are not so good as they 
profess to be, but Jesus was absolutely true. We 
may build our hopes for eternity on any one of 
His sayings. 

But there is more than this in what He says 
here. He is a revealer of the truth. He is true. 
But He says, " I am the truth." God Himself is 
the great central fountain of all truth. All truth 
flows from Him. Christ was the incarnation of 
God — God manifest, made known, in the flesh. 
" He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," he 
said. All that God is was revealed, was made 
known, in Jesus Christ. " I am the truth." 

He said further, " I am the life." Again notice 



30 OUR NEW EDENS 

that He does not say : " I will show you the 
life. I will tell you how to find life.'' You and 
I, if living truly, may show others how to find 
life. We can lead them to the fountain of life. 
That is what every sincere preacher of the gospel 
is doing continually. That is what every faithful 
teacher is doing. That is what every saintly dis- 
ciple does. But no preacher, no teacher, no 
holiest saint, can say to any other, " I am the 
life." We have no life to give to others. We 
cannot spare any of the oil out of our vessel to 
give for any other one's lamp. We cannot im- 
part any portion of our little measure of grace to 
any dearest friend who needs. Only Christ can 
say, " I am the life." He does not merely tell us 
that there is life — He says, " Come unto Me and 
ye shall have life." The life is in Himself — all 
life's fullness — and if we believe in Him we are 
brought into union with Him, and because He 
lives, we live too. 

Now because Christ is the truth and the life, 
He also is the way — that is, the way to heaven 
and the way to God. But how is He the way ? 
In what manner did Jesus by His life or by His 
death become a way, or make His life a way to 
God? 

He did it in his incarnation. He was the Son 



THE WAY TO GOD 31 

of God — He became Son of man ; thus His won- 
derful being bridged the enormous chasm between 
earth and heaven, between the " far country " and 
the Father's house. In His humiliation He 
reaches down to the lowest depth of human sin 
and need, and in His Divine life He reaches up to 
the heart of the Father. Thus He is the way 
from the abysses of sin to the supremest reaches 
of glory, and on Him whosoever will may go up 
out of the dust into blessedness. 

Christ is the way to God, also, because He 
revealed God, brought God down into our com- 
mon life. It was this that made the incarnation 
so wonderful. Jesus said, " He that hath seen 
Me hath seen the Father." Philip and the other 
disciples had been with their Master all the time 
for three years, knowing Him intimately and see- 
ing His life in its familiar revealings. They loved 
Him, but they did not dream that what they saw 
in Him was what their hearts were crying out to 
see — the beauty and glory of the Father. Philip 
was thinking of some dazzling splendor, some 
radiance like a transfiguration, when he pleaded, 
" Show us the Father." Instead of this, however, 
he had been seeing the Father all the time in the 
sweet, patient, pure, gentle, thoughtful, lowly life 
of Jesus. We are all apt to make Philip's mis- 



32 OUR NEW EDENS 

take, looking up to the skies for the glory that is 
shining close to our feet. 

In one of his poems Lowell tells the story 
of an ancient prophet who made a pilgrimage 
into the wilderness until he reached Mount Sinai. 
God's presence had deserted him ; and he thought 
that at Sinai, if anywhere, he should find it again. 
As he engaged in prayer on the holy mount, 
expecting some strange and startling answer to 
his prayers, the moss at his feet unfolded and a 
violet showed itself through the moss. That was 
the answer. Then he remembered that just before 
he left home his little daughter had come running 
to him, offering him a bouquet of these very 
violets. They grew at his own door; he saw 
them every day. He had traveled all that dis- 
tance for a message that had been whispering 
itself to him all the time. 

Many people miss the richest revealings of 
God's love because they expect the good they 
seek to come in some startling or unusual way. 
We do not have to go up to heaven to find God ; 
He has come down close beside us. We do not 
need to ask for theophanies and transfigurations 
— God comes to us in the breaking of bread, in 
the love of our friends, in the sweet amenities of 
our homes, in the simplicity of a little child. 



THE WAY TO GOD 33 

Even yet people read the gospels and wonder 
if God loves them, if God sympathizes with them 
in their sorrows, if God cares when they have 
troubles, if God hears and answers their prayers, 
if God is really gentle, patient, kind, easily 
approached, if God is indeed merciful, gracious, 
and long-suffering. Even yet men cry out, " O 
that I knew where I might find God ! " Even yet 
disciples plead, " Show us the Father.'* Here is 
a little story of a child and its mother, which 
illustrates the slowness of the world to see God 
in Christ. 

i( A mother drew her darling to her breast, 
And of her father in a far-off land 
She strove to make the child-heart understand, 

While, with a kiss of twofold love expressed, 

Intent to make his fondness manifest, 

She said, 'Thy father sends his love to thee.' 
The child looked up, as fain the gift to see, 

And from rose-lips, ' Where is it ? ' came the quest. 

" ' Where is it ? ' Foolish child to question thus, 
When all around and in her mother's eyes 
It shone, and in its fullness she could bask. 
Love needs no token. But are we more wise ? 
Our heavenly Father sends His love to us. 
* Where is it ? ' in our ignorance we ask." 

Yes, we are like the child. Christ says to us, 
" Your Father sends His love to you." We look 
3 



34 OUR NEW EDENS 

up and round about us, and ask, " Where is it ? 
where is God's love ? " Yet all the while we 
have our New Testament in our hands, with its 
blessed story of the love, the compassion, the 
gentleness, the purity, the kindness, the wondrous 
self-sacrifice of Jesus. We do not think that in 
seeing Him we are seeing the Father, that the 
lovely things we behold in Him are really reveal- 
ings of God. In Christ God indeed came down 
and lived among men to convince them of His 
love for them, to make them know that He is 
their Father, to show them His grace and truth. 
As a revealer, Christ is the way to the Father. 

He is the way also as the Redeemer. God 
does not love the world because Christ died for 
it — it is the other way ; Christ died for the world 
because God loved it. But the Scriptures teach 
very plainly that it was necessary for the Son of 
God to die to make the way to life and hope and 
heaven, v Somehow the cross opened the way for 
men to come to God. There was a veil in the 
temple which hid the holy of holies, the place of 
God's presence. No one but the priest could 
pass behind the veil. That meant separation from 
God because of sin. When Christ was dying, that 
veil was torn in two as by an invisible hand. This 
meant that now the way was opened to God for 



THE WAY TO GOD 35 

everyone who would come. Thus Christ became 
the way to God through His death. 

There is another word here. " I am the way 
. . . no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me." 
Not only is He the way to God, but there is no 
other way. To reject Christ is therefore to reject 
life and to close on one's self the only way to 
God. The mercy of God is wide as the sea. 
" Whosoever will may come. Him that cometh 
unto Me I will in no wise cast out." But there is 
only one way to come. Christ is the way to God. 
You need not vex yourself about theological 
questions. You need not be disturbed about the 
articles of the creed which you cannot under- 
stand. Christ is the way to God. To love Christ 
is to love God. To have Christ for your friend is 
to have God for your friend. To rest in Christ is 
to be in the clasp of the everlasting arms. 

Thus Christ is the way to peace, the peace of 
God. He is the way to happiness. He is the 
way to blessing and to all that is good. Christ 
is all that we need. The trouble with many of us 
is that we think we can find the satisfying of our 
wants and hungers in places or things or circum- 
stances. 

"O heart, thou need'st not fly away 
To find thy rest. 



36 OUR NEW EDENS 

Peace seeks for thee, if thou wilt stay 

And just be blessed. 
Fold up thy wings, and sit at Jesus' feet ; 
There wilt thou find thy heaven — a rest complete.' ' 

For a practical thought, set together the ques- 
tion of Thomas and the answer of Jesus. " How 
can we know the way ? " "I am the way." We 
are all the while asking Thomas's question. We 
come to points every day where we are bewil- 
dered, and know not where to go or what to do. 
We see no path before us. Sometimes it is a 
question of duty. Sometimes it is a choice that 
must be made between two courses. And we see 
no escape from it, no hope of relief or help, no 
way out of it. 

Or it may concern life in a larger sense. What 
am I ? Why am I here ? What is there beyond 
the bourn of death ? What is God ? Where is 
He ? Where am I going ? How can I find Him ? 
What and where is heaven ? How can I get 
there? Everyone who thinks at all asks such 
questions at some time. " How can we know the 
way ? " 

To all such questions Jesus answers, " I am the 
way." He is the way through all perplexities. 
He is the way out of all trouble into comfort, 
peace, joy. He is the way through all danger 



THE WAY TO GOD 37 

into safety. He is the way out of doubt into 
faith. He is the way from sin to holiness. He is 
the way from death to life. He is the way from 
earth to heaven. 

Elsewhere He says, " I am the door." A door 
is for entrance. We pass in through the door to 
the beauty, the comfort, the joy, the love, within. 
Christ is the door to everything that is worthy 
and good and blessed and eternal. There is only 
one door ; if we will not enter at it, we must stay 
out in the darkness and sorrow. 

One of Christ's great sayings is this : " I am 
the light of the world : he that followeth Me 
shall not walk in the darkness. " We may not 
know where we are going. We may not under- 
stand the things we are experiencing. We may 
be in sorrow. Loss may be stripping us bare. 
We may seem to be in a calamity. But if we are 
walking close to Christ, we are not in darkness. 
All is plain to Him, and that is enough. 

"I know not — the way is so misty — 
The joys or the griefs it shall bring, 
What clouds are o'erhanging the future, 

What flowers by the roadside shall spring ; 
But there's One who will journey beside me, 

Nor in weal, nor in woe, will forsake ; 
And this is my solace and comfort — 
1 He knoweth the way that I take. ' " 



38 OUR NEW EDENS 

" How can we know the way ? " "I am the 
way." No one can ever be lost with Christ. No 
one can ever get out of the way with Him. The 
greatest and saddest of all trials is to be in some 
trouble and to be alone, to have no one with us. 
Without Christ what can any one do in the dark- 
ness, or in the storm, or in the floods ? How 
could any one find the way home through this 
world's gloom and peril without Christ ? Having 
Christ we do not need to have to understand 
things. He understands — and that is enough. 

A saintly woman suffering for weary months in 
painful illness said to her pastor one day, shortly 
before she went to heaven : " I have such a lovely 
robin that sings outside my window. In the early 
morning, as I lie here, he serenades me." Then, 
as a smile brightened her thin features, she added, 
" I love him because he sings in the rain." That 
is the most beautiful thing about the robin. When 
the storm has silenced almost every other song 
bird, the robin sings on — sings in the rain. That 
is the way the Christian who is with Christ may 
do. Anybody can sing in the sunshine ; you and 
I should sing on when the sun has gone down, or 
when clouds pour out their rains, for Christ is 
with us. We should sing in the rain. 

Why should we be afraid, though we cannot 



THE WAY TO GOD 39 

see the path, though all seems inextricable con- 
fusion about us, though circumstances appear to 
be against us ? Christ is the way and we never 
can be harmed and never can get lost while He is 
with us. To all our questions and fears He an- 
swers, " I am the way," and that is enough. 

"I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care." 

But we must remember that there is no other 
way to God, to the Father's house, no other way 
home, no other who can be to us the way in life's 
darkness and danger. " I am the way .... no 
one cometh unto the Father, but by Me." 

Some of us scarcely know where we are or 
whither we are going. We are not sure of our 
ground — whether we are going forward or grop- 
ing backward. Perhaps we are not sure of our 
beliefs — we are troubled about some of the doc- 
trines. Perhaps we are not sure we are saved. 
We are like men lost in a deep, trackless forest, 
not knowing the way out. 

Suppose you found yourself thus lost some 
day, wandering helplessly, hopelessly, and a man 
came to you who knew all the tangle of the forest, 



40 OUR NEW EDENS 

offering to be your guide, to lead you through 
into the broad, open plain — and to your home; 
what would you do ? To-day, when you are in 
doubt and fear and perplexity, sure of nothing, in 
peril of being lost, not knowing what to do or 
where to turn, One comes to you, One who knows 
all the way, One who knows all about life because 
He has lived it all, and He offers to lead you 
through all the bewildering tangles, out of all the 
doubt and fears, out of the gloom and the danger 
— to God, to the Fathers house — home. What 
should you do ? What will you do ? 

"Thank God, thank God, the Man is found — 
Sure-footed, knowing well the ground. 
He knows the road, for this the way 
He traveled once, as on this day. 
He is our messenger beside ; 
He is our door and path and guide.' ' 



Ill 

PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 



" Pray without ceasing." — I. Thes. v. 17. 

1 No help but prayer, 
A breath that fleets beyond this vain world 
And touches Him that made it." 

Rather, as friends sit sometimes hand in hand, 

Nor mar with words the sweet speech of their eyes ; 

So in soft silence let us oftener bow, 

Nor try with words to make God understand. 

Longing is prayer ; upon its wings we rise 

To where the breath of heaven beats upon our brow." 






Ill 

PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

What place should prayer have in a Christian 
life ? Should we pray little or much ? Should 
we confine our praying to certain days — Sundays, 
for example; or to certain hours or moments of 
our days — mornings, for example, then evenings ? 
Should we pray concerning certain things, certain 
affairs, portions only of our life? Are there 
things we have no permission to take to God in 
prayer? Should we pray only in certain places 
— in our accustomed closet or room at home, or 
in places set apart for divine worship ? Is there 
any place where we may not pray ? 

There is a word of Saint Paul's which seems to 
answer all these questions. " Pray without ceas- 
ing." That means, pray always and everywhere. 
There is nothing we may not take to God in 
prayer, asking Him to help us do it. There is no 
hour of the day when we may not turn to God 
and find Him ready to hear and bless us. The 
gates of prayer are never shut by day or by night. 

43 



44 OUR NEW EDENS 

There is no place where we may not pray. God 
is as accessible to us on the street, in the desert, 
in the midst of a great storm at sea, or in the most 
debased spot of the earth as He is in our own 
sacred closet of prayer, in a consecrated building, 
or at the Lord's table. " Pray without ceasing." 

But how is it possible to obey this teaching ? 
Are we to spend all our time on our knees ? 
This certainly is not the meaning. We have our 
duties, our tasks, our work to do. Suppose that 
men should spend all their days at home, praying, 
for a month, for a year, what would become of 
their business ? What would their families do ? 
Suppose that women should give up all their 
duties — their household duties, their social duties, 
all the work that now fills their hands — and 
literally pray without ceasing the remainder of 
their days, would they please God ? 

Evidently we are not to interpret the lesson 
that way. We are put here to work. " Six days 
shalt thou labor." Our duties fill our hands 
every hour. We sin against God when we 
neglect any of these. I can conceive even of a 
kind of praying that would be sinful — praying 
when some imperative task demands attention, 
when some one needs help, neglecting a duty of 
love, that you may attend some religious service 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 45 

or keep some appointment for devotion. It is 
told in monastic legends of Saint Francesca that 
although she never wearied in her religious duties, 
yet if during her prayers she was summoned 
away by any domestic service, she would close 
her book cheerfully, saying that a wife and 
mother, when called upon, must quit her God at 
the altar to find Him in the duties and tasks of 
her home. There are times when prayer is not 
the duty of the hour. What, then, are we to 
understand by the counsel, " Pray without ceas- 
ing " ? 

For one thing, prayer is part of the expression 
of the Christian's very life. One who does not 
pray is not a Christian, is not a religious man. 
He may be a moral man. A gentleman said the 
other day of a certain prominent business man, 
" He is the most moral and the least religious 
man I ever knew." He meant that the man is 
honest, honorable, just, generous, charitable, very 
careful and exact in all his relations to men, but 
that toward God he is utterly indifferent, never 
thinks of Him, never recognizes Him in any way, 
never prays. So far as he is concerned, there is 
no God. This man would not himself admit as 
much. He would say he believes in God. But 
practically he is an agnostic or an atheist. He is 



46 OUR NEW EDENS 

utterly without religion, which means knowing 
God, recognizing God as Father and Friend, 
living in personal relations with God. 

When the Lord would make Ananias under- 
stand that Saul was now a Christian, he said, 
" Behold he prayeth." When a man begins really 
to pray there is no doubt of his conversion. Saul 
prayed a great deal before he accepted Christ. 
He was a rigid Pharisee and was very religious, 
so far as forms of religion were concerned. But 
he had never prayed before as he prayed that day 
after he had seen Christ. The Christian should 
know God intimately. One writes, " I talk to 
God as to a companion, in prayer and praise, and 
our communion is joy." That is religion, and 
prayer is the heart of it. It is not a matter of 
times and places. Wherever we go we are with 
God. Whatever we are doing, our hearts are 
going out to Him. 

" Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, 
The Christian's native air." 

God is our Father and we are His children. 
We can easily think of the child of a good, noble, 
and loving father, who is entirely out of relations 
with that father. One was telling of a young 
man who has not spoken to his father for five 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 47 

years. He is estranged from him. The father is 
a most worthy man — the fault is not his. He has 
a heart of love — he loves his estranged son and 
longs to give him back his place of confidence 
and honor. But all these years the son has lived 
as if he had no father in the world. 

God is our Father, with infinite love in His 
heart for us, ready and eager to help us and bless 
us in every way. We can cut ourselves off from 
Him if we will. Religion, faith, is putting our- 
selves in the children's place toward God. We 
do not then pray to make God willing to give 
good things to us— He is always willing to give. 
The Master said : - If ye then, being evil, know 
how to give good gifts unto your children, how 
much more shall your Father who is in heaven 
give good things to them that ask Him?" Prayer 
then is going to God, believing in His love for 
us, knowing that He wants to help us, and asking 
Him as children ask their parents for the things 
we need. 

The true child has always the child's place in 
the home. He is not granted the privileges of a 
child only on certain days or at certain hours. 
To pray without ceasing is to be always in happy 
relations of love with our Father. One tells this 
pleasant incident : — 



48 OUR NEW EDENS 

(l My little girl to-night with childish glee, 

Although her months have numbered not two score, 

Escaped her nurse, and at my study door, 

With tiny fingers rapping, spoke to me. 

Though faint her words, I heard them tremblingly 

Fall from her lips, as if the darkness bore 

Its weight upon her. ' Father's child ! ' No more 

I waited for, but straightway willingly 

I brought the sweet intruder into light, 

With happy laughter.' ' 

If we always keep ourselves in the relation of 
children to God — loving, obedient, trustful, sub- 
missive to His will — w r e shall really pray without 
ceasing. Every act will then be a prayer. Every 
word will be a song of praise. All we do will 
then be reverent worship. 

Again, to pray without ceasing is to do every- 
thing with prayer. This does not mean that 
every piece of work we undertake must be begun 
with a formal act of prayer — stopping, kneeling 
down, and offering a spoken petition. To pray 
without ceasing is to have the heart always in 
converse with God. It is to live so near to God 
that we can talk with Him wherever we go, ask 
Him questions and get His answers, seek His 
help, His wisdom, His guidance, and obtain what 
we ask. 

There is no habit that we should more sedu- 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 49 

lously form than that of talking with God about 
everything we do. We are often told that we 
should begin every day with prayer. That is 
very fit and beautiful. The first face our eyes see 
in the morning should be Christ's. His too 
should be the first voice we hear, and to Him our 
first words should be spoken. Henry Drum- 
mond tells us that ten minutes in the morning, 
yes, two minutes, spent really with Christ, will 
change all our day for us. A day without prayer 
is a day of darkness and sadness. 

It is often said that we should count that day 
lost in which no kindness is done, no deed of love 
to any one, no help given. But sadder far is a 
day without prayer. It is a day without God, 
without heaven's light shining into it, a day un- 
blessed. The morning you forget to pray is an 
unhappy morning for you. One writes thus of a 
prayerless day : — 

" The sunlight streaming o'er my temple gate 
With ray beguiling, soft and fair, 
Made me at dawn neglect until too late 
To bar it with the wonted prayer. 
• 

u Two fair-clad robbers, Duty and Delight, 
Won entrance and engaged my mind, 
While dark, unnoticed, and in rags bedight 
Worry and Folly crept up behind. 

4 



5 o OUR NEW EDENS 

"To-night there's ruin in my Holy Place, 
Its vessels gone, its treasures spent — 
Contentment, faith, and every hard- won grace 
Displaced and spoiled — Lord, I repent.' ' 

But besides beginning each day with prayer, we 
may do each several act all the day with prayer. 
We may form the habit of praying at every step 
as we go along. That was part of St. Paul's 
meaning when he said, " Whatsoever ye do, in 
word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord 
Jesus." He would have us include every word 
we speak as well as every deed we do. Think 
what it would mean to have every word that 
passes our lips winged and blessed with prayer — 
always to breathe a little prayer before we speak, 
as we speak. This would put heavenly sweetness 
into all our speech. It would make all our words 
kindly, loving, inspiring words, words that will 
edify and minister grace to them that hear. We 
can scarcely think of one using bitter words, back- 
biting words, unholy words, if his heart be always 
full of prayer, if he have trained himself to pray 
always before he speaks. 

But we are to do all our deeds, too, in the 
name of the Lord Jesus. That means that we 
should do everything for Him, to please Him. 
If we could get this lesson learned, if we would 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 51 

really pray without ceasing, how beautiful our 
lives would be ! How well we should do all our 
work ! Only think of a man in business doing 
all his day's business in a spirit of prayer — breath- 
ing a little prayer as he makes a bargain, as he 
writes a business letter, as he talks with other 
men. Think of a woman amid her household 
cares taking everything to God for His blessing, 
for His approval, for His direction. These are 
not by any means impossible suppositions. In- 
deed, this is the way a Christian is to live, should 
always live — doing all in the name of the Lord 
Jesus. 

We are exhorted elsewhere, too, to make all 
our requests known to God in prayer. We do 
not know what we miss by leaving God out of so 
much of our life. We wonder often why we fail, 
why so little comes of our efforts, why we do not 
get along better with people, why we are not 
happy, why joy is so wanting in our experience, 
why we are so easily fretted and vexed and made 
discontented, why we fall so easily into surliness 
and bad temper. It is because we cease to pray. 

"O what peace we often forfeit, 
O what needless pain we bear, 
All because we do not carry 
Everything to God in prayer." 



52 OUR NEW EDENS 

You say you haven't time to pray so much. 
" Haven't time ? " You have time for everything 
else — time for many things, perhaps, of question- 
able importance. Have you not time to look into 
God's face for a moment before you begin a new- 
piece of work, before you make a new investment, 
before you start on a business trip, before you go 
out to spend an evening, before you open a new 
book ? " Haven't time ? " Does it seem wasted 
time when you stop to eat your meals ? Do you 
regard your hours spent in sleep as lost hours ? 
Does being courteous waste time ? Nor is time 
spent in getting God's blessing ever lost time. 
The Sabbath hours given to worship are not 
wasted hours. 

But really the habit of unceasing prayer does 
not require time. It is but looking into God's 
face and saying, " Help me in this." " Bless me 
as I do this." 

Francis of Assisi was mighty in prayer. God's 
blessing seemed to be on everything he did, on 
every word he spoke. One who loved him 
desired to learn the secret of his devotions, and 
watched him to see how he prayed. All he saw 
was this — again and again Francis was heard 
saying, with bowed head and clasped hands, the 
name of Jesus — " Jesus ! Jesus ! " That was the 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 53 

way he prayed. He did everything in that blessed 
name, and all the power of Jesus was in what he 
did. It wastes no time to speak that name as we 
enter a new path, or begin a new task, or go out 
to a new duty. Yet that is what it is to pray 
without ceasing. 

It is well for us to learn this lesson — to take 
everything to God in prayer, to pray as we go 
from task to task — always silently, unostenta- 
tiously. We need to guard against making a 
show of our praying, talking about it. But we 
may form the habit of putting up little word- 
prayers continually. When you feel an inclina- 
tion to speak bitterly, to answer sharply ; when 
you have been stung by another's speech or act ; 
when you are tempted to refuse a request for 
help, to do some selfish thing, to pass by a human 
need, to speak an untruth, lift up your heart in 
the prayer, " Jesus, help me to do thy will." Or 
if you meet a sudden temptation and are in danger 
of being swept away, look up and cry, " Jesus, 
save me ! " 

Do you suppose that God is far off from you 
these days, any day? Do you suppose that 
Christ ever leaves you alone for an instant, any- 
where you may chance to be ? No, no ; He is 
nearer to you all the time than your dearest, 



54 OUR NEW EDENS 

nearest friend, now close by your side. Believe 
this, and when you feel any need, any heart 
hunger, any sense of loneliness, the creeping over 
you of any shadow of danger, the coming upon 
you of any enemy ; when you fear you will fall, 
or stumble, or say some word you would not say, 
or let some feeling into your heart you would not 
admit there ; if you are growing discontented or 
discouraged, speak His name. That will be 
prayer enough. 

It is impossible to tell of the blessing of such a 
spirit and habit of prayer. Those who have not 
learned to pray thus " without ceasing " have no 
conception of what they are missing. If we all 
had learned this lesson, what a company of over- 
coming Christians we would be ! The world 
would have little power over us. We would 
tread it under our feet. We would be strong 
where now we are so weak. We would be vic- 
torious over temptation, where now we fail so 
sadly. If you knew that Christ was always actu- 
ally walking with you, how strong you would be! 

"Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong, 
Or others— that we are not always strong, 

That we are ever overborne with care, 
That we should ever weak or heartless be, 

Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, 
And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? " 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 55 

Some people seem to think that all prayer is 
request, asking favors from God. They never go 
to God unless they want Him to give them some- 
thing, to do something for them, or to get them 
out of some trouble or danger. But if we pray 
only when we have a favor to ask, we do not love 
God as we should. Really, request is but a small 
portion of truest praying. 

You have a dear human friend whom you love 
very much. You greatly enjoy being with this 
friend. You say it strengthens you, cheers you, 
helps you, to spend an hour with him. Now 
when you are with this friend, what do you talk 
about? Do you do nothing but make requests 
and ask favors, and beg your friend to do things 
for you ? I am quite sure that is not all you do. 
Ofttimes you pass the whole hour that you are 
together and do not make one request nor ask 
one favor. You commune — that is the word. 
You sit together, your friend and you, and talk 
of many things that are dear to you both. Then 
sometimes you do not talk at all. It is just 
enough to be with your friend, to have his pres- 
ence near you, to look into his face, to know that 
he loves you. It strengthens you just to be with 
him. 

The same is true of communion with Christ. 



56 OUR NEW EDENS 

It is not all request. We come to Him many 
times with no definite favor to ask. We want 
just to be with Him, to look into His face, to sit 
in the sweet atmosphere of His presence, to let 
His love pour into our hearts : — 

"It is not prayer — 

This clamor of our eager wants 
That fills the air 

With wearying, selfish plaints. 

"It is true prayer 

To seek the Giver more than gift ; 
God's life to share, 

And love — for this our cry to lift. * ' 

There is no lesson we need to take more to 
heart than this lesson of prayer. This is not a 
praying age. Every call is to work, to activity. 
We are living in most strenuous times. The 
pressure of active duty is tremendous. In all 
departments of life this is true. Men have little 
time for leisure. In the church, too, the call is to 
activity. The cry is for the evangelizing of the 
world. It is a missionary age in which we are 
living. Christians hear but little about the duty 
of meditation, of devotion, of prayer — they are 
called rather out into the field to work, to hasten 
the coming of the kingdom. 

This is well. Every redeemed life should be 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 57 

consecrated to service. But there is danger in 
this intense activity. The danger is not that we 
become too strenuous in carrying the gospel to 
men — this never could be — but that we get too 
little quiet in our lives for the cultivation of our 
own heart piety. There must be root before 
there can be strong branches and much fruit. 
We must sit at Christ's feet to be fed before we 
can go out to feed others. Not a word should be 
said to restrain earnestness, to check enthusiasm 
in Christ's work, to hold any one back from the 
service of Christ. But in our much serving and 
work we should never forget the necessity of 
Bible reading and communion with Christ, to 
prepare us for the noble work we are striving to 
do. All the best things of Christian life are the 
fruit of silent meditation. 

Life is not easy for any of us. We can live 
grandly, purely, Christianly, only by being much 
with Christ. We will rob ourselves of Divine 
blessing, of beauty of character, of power in ser- 
vice, if we fail to make room in all our busy days 
for quiet retreats from noise and strife, where we 
may sit at Christ's feet to hear His words and lie 
on His bosom that we may absorb His spirit, to 
prepare us for the toil and the witnessing. 

Father Ryan, a Roman Catholic poet-priest of 



58 OUR NEW EDENS 

the South, writes thus of " the valley of 
silence " : — 

In the hush of the valley of silence 

I dream all the songs that I sing ; 
And the music floats down the dim valley 

Till each finds a word for a wing, 
That to hearts, like the dove of the deluge, 

A message of peace they may bring. 

But far out on the deep there are billows 
That never shall break on the beach ; 

And I have heard songs in the silence 
That never shall float into speech ; 

And I have had dreams in the valley 
Too lofty for language to reach. 

And I have seen thoughts in the valley — 
Ah, me, how my spirit was stirred ! 

And they wear holy veils on their faces ; 
Their footsteps can scarcely be heard : 

They pass through the valley like virgins 
Too pure for the touch of a word. 

Do you ask me the place of the valley, 
Ye hearts that are harrowed by care ? 

It lieth afar between mountains, 

And God and His angels are there : 

One is the dark mountain of sorrow, 
And one the bright mountain of prayer. 

It is only in the " valley of silence " with Christ 
that we can dream the dreams and see the visions 



PRAYER IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 59 

which we would translate into noble life, Christly 
character, and worthy deed, out among men. 
We must hide away much in prayer if we would 
get strength for valiant struggle and effective ser- 
vice for our Master. 



IV 
A PARABLE OF GROWTH 



" I will be as the dew unto Israel ; he shall blossom as the 
lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall 
spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell 
as Lebanon." — Hosea xiv.. 5, 6. 

" God's Spirit falls on thee as dewdrops on a rose, 
If but like a rose to Him thy heart unclose." 

" Dear God ! Let me grow from day to day, 
Clinging and sunny and bright ! 
Though planted in shade, Thy window is near, 
And my leaves may turn to the light." 



IV 

A PARABLE OF GROWTH 

God's forgiveness is wonderful. If we fail, He 
gives us another chance. Even the saddest ruin 
of a life may be built into a holy temple of God. 
We have it all in a chapter in Hosea. We have 
the Divine pleading : " O Israel, return unto 
Jehovah thy God ; for thou hast fallen by thine 
iniquity." Then the way back is marked out — 
confession, repentance, consecration. Then comes 
the assurance : " I will heal their backsliding, I 
will love them freely; for Mine anger is turned 
away." Then follows this wonderful promise of 
restoration and prosperity : " I will be as the dew 
unto Israel ; he shall blossom as the lily, and cast 
forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall 
spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, 
and his smell as Lebanon." 

It is a picture of beauty and fruitfulness. There 
had been bareness and desolation. Sin is drought. 
It causes blight. Every flower fades and every 
green thing withers. But God's love is like rain. 

63 



64 OUR NEW EDENS 

It falls on the parched life and changes it to gar- 
den loveliness. 

The prophet's words contain a parable of spirit- 
ual growth. We may note some of the features, 
for they belong to all true Christian life. 

One of these qualities is purity. " He shall 
blossom as the lily." The other day a friend 
sent me half a dozen white lilies, and all the days 
since they have kept their freshness and their 
unblemished whiteness. They have preached 
their little sermon to every one who has come in, 
saying, " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they 
shall see God." Have you ever noticed how 
earnestly this lesson of purity is taught in the 
Bible ? Thus in one of the Psalms we have the 
question and the answer: "Who shall ascend 
into the hill of Jehovah ? and who shall stand in 
His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a 
pure heart." 

Then James tells us that we are to have " pure 
religion and undefiled before our God and 
Father." He tells us also that we are to keep 
ourselves " unspotted from the world." We are 
not to flee away from the world, for our duty is 
in it, and we must be in it to bless it, to do good 
in it, to be light in its darkness, to comfort its 
sorrow : but while in the world we are not to be- 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 65 

come stained by its sin or to have our garments 
soiled by its evil. Some one tells of seeing an 
enameled plant growing on the edge of a coal 
mine. Though the black dust floated about it 
continually, not a particle of it adhered to the 
plant, and its snowy whiteness took no stain. 
This illustrates the purity which should always 
be found in the Christian life — in the world, but 
unspotted by its evil. That is the way the Mas- 
ter passed through this world. That is the way 
He would have us go through it. 

Something else is necessary, however — more 
than our own good resolve — if our hearts and 
lives are to be like the lily in its immaculate 
whiteness. We need both Divine cleansing and 
Divine keeping. The Rev. F. B. Meyer tells of 
calling one day, in his pastoral rounds, on a 
washerwoman whom he found hanging the last 
of her day's washing on the line. During his 
brief stay in her house there came a thick and 
sudden fall of snow. When he came out the 
ground was white. " Your clothes do not look 
as white as they did when I came in," Mr. Meyer 
remarked. "The clothes are just the same/' the 
woman answered, " but what can stand against 
God's perfect white ? " Compared with the snow, 
the whitest garments look soiled and dingy. We 
5 



66 OUR NEW EDENS 

think we are reasonably pure and good, but when 
we stand beside the holy Christ we see that we 
are unholy and unworthy and need cleansing. 
We must pray the prayer, " Wash me, and I 
shall be whiter than snow." Only Christ can 
cleanse us. Only He can keep us pure and clean. 
Purity is one of the qualities of the ideal 
Christian life. 

Another quality of a true spiritual life is 
root. " He shall . . . cast forth his roots as 
Lebanon." Probably the reference is to the 
cedars of Lebanon. Lilies are pure and gentle, 
but they are very frail, with shallow rooting, 
easily torn out of the ground. No one simile 
tells all the story of a noble and worthy life. 
The cedar sends its roots down deep into the 
earth, anchoring it so securely that the wildest 
storm cannot tear it loose. Purity is essential in 
a Christian life. Gentleness and delicacy are un- 
failing characteristics of a Christlike spirit. But 
there must also be strength. It is never easy to 
live well in this world. We cannot hope to be 
kept always in a shelter of tender love, where no 
storm beats, where there are no struggles. Jesus 
Christ, God's best beloved Son, faced the most 
terrible temptations. His life was exposed to all 
manner of trials. No follower of His can pass 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 67 

through life and miss antagonism. There must 
be strength to withstand the tempest as well as 
purity to look into God's face. Roots are import- 
ant as well as whiteness. The trees that grow on 
the mountains are deeply and strongly rooted. 
So if we would stand true, steadfast, unmovable, 
as we are bidden to stand, we must be anchored 
by an unwavering faith in Christ. 

The root is not the part of the tree we admire 
the most. Indeed, it is not seen at all. No one 
praises it. It creeps down into the dark earth 
and is hidden. But we know its importance. It 
feeds the tree's life and then it holds the tree in 
its place amid the storms. Every strong char- 
acter must have a deep root. Shallow rooting 
means a feeble power of resistance. Because it 
lacked root, the seed sown on rocky ground 
withered away in the first hot sun. We must be 
deeply rooted in Christ if we would endure unto 
the end. 

It takes both the gentleness of the lily and the 
strength of the cedar to make a true Christian 
character. Gentleness without strength is not 
noble — it is weakness. Strength without gentle- 
ness is not great — it is only brute force. But 
sweetness and strength combined yield heroic 
manhood. Such a man was Luther. Such a 



68 OUR NEW EDENS 

man was Cromwell. "Kiss me, Hardy," said 
Lord Nelson, dying. Such a man was Jesus 
Christ. 

Another quality in the beautiful life is breadth. 
" His branches shall spread." If there be strength 
with deep rooting, there will also be the extending 
of boughs. Life broadens as it grows. We all 
begin as babies, but we ought not to continue 
babies. We ought to grow into men, putting 
away childish things. Some people, however, 
seem never to advance in spiritual life. 

One of the strange freaks of Japanese horticul- 
ture is the cultivation of dwarf trees. The Japan- 
ese grow forest giants in flowerpots. Some of 
these strange miniature trees are a century old, 
and are only two or three feet high. The gar- 
dener, instead of trying to get them to grow to 
their best, takes infinite pains to keep them little. 
His purpose is to grow dwarfs, not giant trees. 
From the time of their planting they are re- 
pressed, starved, crippled, stunted. When buds 
appear, they are nipped off. So the tree remains 
only a dwarf all its life. 

Some Christian people seem to do the same 
thing with their lives. They do not allow them- 
selves to grow. They rob themselves of spiritual 
nourishment, restrain the noble impulses of their 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 69 

nature, shut out of their hearts the power of the 
Holy Spirit, and are only dwarf Christians when 
they might be strong in Christ Jesus, with the 
abundant life which the Master wants all His 
followers to have. 

There is not enough breadth in many lives. 
We ought to grow in height, reaching up to the 
fullness of the stature of Christ. We ought to 
grow in the outreach of our lives. We ought to 
know more of God and of heavenly things to- 
morrow than we do to-day. We are told that if 
we follow on we shall know, that if we do the 
little portion of the will of God we understand 
we shall be led on to see and know more of that 
will. We ought to grow in love also, becoming 
more patient, more gentle, more thoughtful, more 
unselfish day by day, extending the reach of our 
unselfishness and helpfulness. 

There is something else about these spreading 
branches. A little farther down in the chapter 
we read this : " They that dwell under his shadow 
shall return. " The children of men find shelter 
and rest under the shadow of the good man's 
wide-spreading life. We all know people of whom 
that is true — others come and live beneath the 
shadow of their love, their strength, their be- 
neficence. They live to serve others, not to be 



70 OUR NEW EDENS 

served by others. They seek always to do good 
to every one they meet. Their doors are ever 
open to those who come needing counsel, cheer, 
help, and hope. They are an unspeakable bless- 
ing and comfort in the world. Their lives are like 
trees which cast a wide shade in which children 
play, beneath which the weary stop in their jour- 
ney to rest. Some verses by Alice W. Bailey l fit 
in here : — 

I know a nature like a tree ; 

Men seek its shade instinctively. 

It is a choir for singing birds, 

A covert for the flocks and herds. 

It grows and grows, nor questions why, 

But reaches up into the sky, 

And stretches down into the soil, 

Finding no trouble in its toil. 

It flaunts no scar to tell of pain, 

Self-healed its wounds have closed again 

Unaided by its pensioners ; 

And yet I know that great heart stirs 

To each appeal and claim, indeed 

Leans to their lack and needs their need. 

There is something very admirable in the beauty 
of such a life as this picture suggests — a tree 
putting out its branches to make grateful shade 
and shelter for earth's hunted ones, hungry ones, 
weary ones, sorrowing ones. Too many people 

1 The Outlook, June 27, 1903. 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 71 

seek to broaden their lives only to gather the 
more into their grasp for their own selfish ends — 
not to bless the world, but to gain the world for 
their own enriching. Others there are who seek 
to draw people to them, but whose branches do 
not make a safe and wholesome shelter for the 
weary and the troubled, but rather a poisoned 
and perilous shadow in w r hich the innocent are 
harmed or even ruined. We who are Christians 
should be like trees of blessing, under which 
others may come, sure of finding only comfort 
and good. 

Another of the qualities of the spiritual life 
suggested here is beauty. " His beauty shall be 
as the olive tree." Beauty is a quality of the 
complete Christian life. Writers note the fact 
that the beauty of the olive is peculiar. There 
are other trees which are more brilliant, more 
graceful in form. " The palm at once impresses 
by its elegance, the apple tree by its blossoms, the 
orange by its golden fruit and unique fragrance, 
the tulip tree by its gorgeous flowers. The olive, 
however, is by no means picturesque — it often 
looks even stunted and shabby. . . . But the soft 
delicate beauty grows upon you until, stirred by 
the wind, the shimmering silver of its leaves makes 
a picture. ... So Christian character is often not 



72 OUR NEW EDENS 

in the least brilliant, heroic, or striking. The 
noblest men and women are modest, homely, 
simple souls ; yet they reveal a mild and serious 
grace which is, in truth, the perfection of beauty." l 

Thus the olive tree becomes a true symbol of 
Christlike character — not showy, not flashing its 
brilliance in the eyes of men, but humble, quiet, 
adorned with the beauty which pleases Christ. 
Peter has some good words about true adorning 
for women : " Whose adorning let it not be the 
outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of 
wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel ; 
but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the 
incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, 
which is in the sight of God of great price." 

There is a clause in Saint Paul's cluster of 
" whatsoevers " which make up his picture of 
noble, Christlike character that fits in here — 
" whatsoever things are lovely." We must never 
leave out the things that are lovely when we are 
making up our ideal of spiritual life. There 
are unlovely things in the dispositions of too 
many people. We who are Christians should 
seek always to be rid of whatsoever is not beau- 
tiful. Our daily prayer should be, " Let the 
beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." 

1 The Rev. W. L. Watkinson. 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 73 

Saint Paul told Timothy that the word of God 
is " profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correc- 
tion. " We know what correction is. Young 
people at school w r rite exercises, and their teach- 
ers go over them and correct them, pointing out 
the mistakes. The Bible, if we read it as we 
should, corrects our faulty essays in living, shows 
us the errors in our lives, the defects in our char- 
acters, the flaws in our dispositions. What then ? 
" Count that day happy," says Ruskin, " when 
you have discovered a fault in yourself" — not 
happy because the fault is there, but because you 
know it now, that you may cure it. 

Another quality of a true life suggested in this 
parable of growth is fragrance. " His smell as 
Lebanon." "A good name is better than precious 
oil." Another of Saint Paul's " whatsoevers " is 
very suggestive — " whatsoever things are of good 
report." There is an aroma that belongs to every 
life, w r hich is the composite product of the things 
that are said about the person. Some men live 
beautifully, sweetly, patiently, unselfishly, help- 
fully, joyfully, speaking only good words, never 
rash, intemperate, unloving words, and walking 
among men carefully, humbly, reverently; and 
the odor of their lives is like that of Mary's oint- 
ment. Other men are ruled by self or by the 



74 OUR NEW EDENS 

world or by greed — they are of the earth, earthy. 
They are untruthful, resentful, unloving, of hasty 
speech — and we know what the effluence of such 
lives is. 

There is something very mysterious about per- 
fume. No one can describe it. You cannot take 
a photograph of it. Yet it is a very essential 
quality of the flower. The same is true of that 
strange thing we call influence. Influence is the 
aroma of a life. The most important thing about 
our life is this subtle, imponderable, indefinable, 
mysterious element of our personality which is 
known as influence. This is really all of us that 
counts in our final impression on other lives. 

" His smell as Lebanon." Lebanon's gardens 
and trees and fruits made delicious fragrance 
which filled all the region round about. Every 
Christian life ought to be fragrant, but there is 
only one way to make it so. Men gather the 
perfume from acres of roses and it fills only a 
little phial. Your influence, the perfume of your 
life, is gathered from all the acres of your years — 
all that has grown upon those acres. If it is to 
be like the essence of ten thousand roses — sweet, 
pure, undefiled, your life must be all well watched, 
clean, sweet, holy, loving, true. Only roses must 
grow on your fields. The evil as well as the 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 75 

good is gathered and helps to make the com- 
posite influence of your life. 

We know how easily one's influence is hurt, 
how little follies and indiscretions in one's con- 
duct or behavior take away from the sweetness of 
one's reputation. Says the author of Ecclesiastes, 
" Dead flies cause the oil of the perfumer to send 
forth an evil odor ; so doth a little folly outweigh 
wisdom and honor." We need to think seriously 
of this matter. We are not always careful enough 
about keeping out the dead flies. There are 
many men who are good in the general tenor of 
their lives, godly, prayerful, consistent in larger 
ways, but the perfume of whose names is rendered 
unsavory by little dead flies in their common liv- 
ing. They are not always careful to keep their 
word; they are not prompt in paying their debts ; 
they are not watchful of their speech ; they are 
not loyal in their friendships ; they are indiscreet 
in their relations with others ; they are wanting 
in refinement or courtesy ; they are resentful — we 
all know how many of these dead flies there are 
which cause the ointment of some people's names 
to send forth an unsavory odor. 

We need to watch our lives in the smallest 
matters if we would keep our names sweet 
wherever we are known. Influence is most im- 



76 OUR NEW EDENS 

portant. It is our mightiest force for good or 
evil. Let us keep it pure and good for Christ. 
Let us keep Christ always in it. 

These are some of the lessons which this Old 
Testament nature-parable suggests. These are 
some of the essential qualities of a true Christian 
life. It should be pure. It should be deeply- 
rooted in Christ and strong. It should spread 
out its branches and become a shelter and com- 
fort to other lives. It should be beautiful with 
the beauty of humility, truth, and love. It 
should be fragrant with the aroma of a sweet, 
holy, and loving life. 

Is the picture discouraging by reason of its 
lofty qualities ? Is it so high in its excellence 
that we seem unable to reach it? At a recent 
commencement one of the speakers told of two 
scenes he had witnessed. The first was this : He 
was in an artist's studio when the artist was 
about beginning his work on a canvas. He was 
putting a little daub of paint here, another daub 
there. There certainly was no semblance of any- 
thing beautiful on the canvas. Indeed, there 
seemed no evidence of any design, no trace of 
any form or figure, no clue to what the artist 
meant to do. 

That was the first scene. This was the second : 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 77 

A large company of people standing before a 
great picture, all admiring it and praising its 
beauty. This was the finished painting of which 
the artist, that day a year or two before, was 
making the first rough outline. 

Let us not be discouraged because to-day the 
picture has almost none of the beauty which is 
visioned in the great ideal we have been studying. 
We are only beginning it. Let us continue at 
our holy task until in every line it glows with the 
loveliness of the ideal. But remember we cannot 
dream the vision upon the canvas — we can put it 
there only by patient thought, effort, and disci- 
pline. 

Then let us not forget that God will work with 
us in our efforts to grow into the Divine beauty, 
if only we seek His grace and help. There is a 
story of an artist-pupil who had wrought long at 
his canvas and was discouraged because the noble 
vision came so slowly, because his hand seemed 
so unskillful. Then one day he sat by his easel, 
weary and disheartened, and fell asleep. While 
he slept his master came and, taking the brush, 
with a few swift touches finished the picture. 
That is the way our Master does with us when 
we are doing our best and seem only to fail. He 



78 OUR NEW EDENS 

comes in the stillness and puts His own hand to 
our work and completes it. 

There is one sentence in this parable of growth 
which is full of inspiration and hope : " I will be 
as the dew unto Israel." In the East the dew is 
almost like rain with us. When there is no dew, 
everything burns up. When there is dew, the 
thirsty fields are refreshed. All the wonderful 
beauty described in these words is produced by 
the night-mist or dew. 

Now God says, " I will be as the dew unto 
Israel." What dew does for withering gardens 
and fields, God says He will do for His people if 
they but repent and return to Him. He does not 
say He will send the dew — He says He will Him- 
self be as the dew. So the dew which renews 
and refreshes withered lives is God Himself. Let 
us learn well this great truth, that God would put 
Himself into our withered lives. That is the 
heart of our religion. We are not set merely to 
copy a picture upon canvas, to imitate a lovely 
model held before us. Christianity tells us of a 
Divine Spirit who with unseen hands comes to 
fashion the picture upon our spirits. " I will be as 
the dew unto Israel." What the dew or the rain 
is to the withered fields, God's Spirit will be to 



A PARABLE OF GROWTH 79 

our bare, withered lives. We need only to yield 
ourselves to this gentle Holy Spirit. 

Some of us are perplexed to know how we 
ever can grow into the purity, the strength, the 
breadth, the usefulness, the beauty, the sweetness 
of Christ. Imagine a field after long drought, its 
foliage drooping, its flowers withering, everything 
on it dying, perplexed and wondering how it 
ever can grow into garden beauty. Then a cloud 
comes up out of the sea and pours its gentle rains 
for hours upon the parched ground. The ques- 
tion is answered. All the field has to do is to 
open its bosom to the treasures of the rain. All 
we have to do in our spiritual need is to let God's 
Spirit into our hearts. 

" Receive Him as the dew into thy heart, 
O thirsty one, who long His grace hast sought. 
Dew forms in stillness ; struggle not, nor strive ; 
What thou dost need to learn is to receive. 

" The air surrounding thee is full of God, 
With love and life and blessing for thee stored ; 
Get cool and quiet, and the dew will fall — 
A little at a time, not once for all." 



V 

THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 



" In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength, 
Isaiah xxx. 15. 

" There the dews of quiet fall, 

Singing birds and soft winds stray ; 
Shall the tender Heart of all 

Be less kind than they ? "— /. G. Whitlier. 



V 

THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 

A quiet life has many points of beauty. It 
has poise, the lack of which is always a serious 
blemish. It has self-mastery, which is kingliness. 
Quietness is the condition of receptiveness. Some 
people make so much noise that they hear none 
of the great and noble voices which are speaking 
continually in their ears words of wisdom. Quiet- 
ness favors thought and meditation. Some of us 
never give ourselves time to think, and hence we 
never have any words worth while to speak. 

It would seem that anybody could keep still 
and quiet. We would say that it requires no 
exertion. It is activity that is hard — it ought to 
be easy to rest. It takes energy to speak — it 
should be easy just to be silent. 

But we all know that few things are harder for 
most people than to be still. Our lives are like 
the ocean in their restlessness. They cannot be 
comprised and confined within narrow limits. 
This is one of the proofs of our greatness and our 

83 



84 OUR NEW EDENS 

immortality. Life is vast and ever in motion. 
Dead things have no trouble in keeping still. A 
stone is never restless. The lower the quality of 
life, the easier it is for it to be quiet. The human 
soul was made for God, and its very greatness 
renders its repose and quiet the most difficult of 
all its attainments. 

Yet the lesson of quietness is set for us again 
and again in the Scriptures. We are told that 
the effect of righteousness is quietness. We are 
specially exhorted to " study to be quiet," to 
make it the aim of our life to be still ; to make a 
study of it as something to be learned, as one 
would learn an art or train one's self in beauty of 
living. In the margin the language is even 
stronger — " Be ambitious to be quiet." Think of 
human ambitions — to be rich, to be honored, to 
have power, to do great things ! Quietness must, 
therefore, be one of the most desirable of all 
qualities in life. We are to be ambitious to be 
quiet. Another saying of the New Testament is, 
referring to women, " The apparel of a meek and 
quiet spirit is of great price in the sight of God." 
Quietness is extolled, too, as a privilege in a 
noisy world. " A dry morsel and quietness 
therewith is better than a feast with strife and 
contention." 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 85 

Quietness is evidently a mark of high culture. 
On the mountain the prophet saw the wild con- 
vulsions of nature — the storm, the earthquake, 
and the fire — but in none of these was God mani- 
fested. Then followed " the voice of gentle still- 
ness," and that was God. Yet there are many 
people who think that noise is strength, that 
quietness lacks robustness and vigor. They sup- 
pose the more noise a speaker makes, the greater 
orator he is ; that the louder one's voice in pray- 
ing, the more power the man has in prayer. But 
noise is not eloquence. Mr. Beecher used to say 
that when he was speaking and had no thoughts, 
nothing to say, he thundered, and the people 
were greatly moved. The greatest preacher is 
the one who the most deeply impresses other 
lives, turning them from sin to holiness, from 
lower to higher things. 

The common impression probably is that 
people who make the most bluster and show in 
their callings are the greatest workers, accomplish 
the most, produce the deepest, best impressions. 
But this is not true. The best Christian workers 
anywhere are those who make the least noise. 
They live deeply, dwelling in the valley of silence. 
We never can do our best anywhere if we have 
not learned to be quiet 



86 OUR NEW EDENS 

" We mar our work for God by noise and bustle ; 
Can we not do our part and not be heard ? 
Why should we care that men should see us 
With our tools, and praise the skill with which we use them ? 
And oftentimes we chafe, and think it hard 
That we should lay our great and costly stones 
For other men to build on and get praised, 
While our names are forgotten or passed o , er. ,, 

In all departments of life it is the quiet forces 
that effect the most How silently all day long 
the sunbeams fall upon the fields and gardens ! 
They make no noise. Yet what cheer, what 
benediction, what renewal of life, what inspirations 
of beauty they diffuse ! How silently the flowers 
bloom, and yet what sweetness they pour upon 
the air ! How silently the stars move on in their 
majestic marches round God's throne ! They 
utter no voice. Yet they are vast worlds, or they 
are central suns with systems of worlds revolving 
round them. How silently God's angels work, 
stepping with noiseless tread through our homes, 
performing ever their quiet ministries for us and 
about us ! Who ever hears the flutter of the 
angels' wings or the whisper of their tongues ? 
Yet they ever throng the air and are continually 
bearing to us their messages of cheer, joy, hope, 
and comfort, and are ceaselessly engaged in their 
ministries of protection, guidance, and help. 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS S7 

How silently God Himself works ! He is never 
absent from our side. He never ceases blessing 
us for a moment. He brings us gifts while we 
sleep and is gone before we awake. He comes so 
quietly that He never disturbs us. He comes 
into our sick rooms, stands beside our beds of 
pain, and sits down beside us in our time of 
sorrow and gives comfort, but we never hear 
Him. He makes no ado. 

One of the most beautiful qualities in the life 
of Christ was His quietness. The prophet said 
of Him before He came into the world, " He will 
not cry, nor lift up His voice, nor cause it to be 
heard in the street." When earthly kings move 
through the land they make a great display. 
Heralds go before them and proclaim their com- 
ing. Attention is drawn to them and great public 
demonstrations mark their movements. The 
booming of cannon, the ringing of bells, and the 
shouts of the people tell of their coming and 
going. When heaven's King went on earth's 
streets there was no noise. He sought not, but 
rather shunned, publicity and fame. Throngs 
did indeed follow Him, but they were drawn by 
the ministry of love He wrought wherever He 
went — healing, comforting, forgiving, saving. 
When the people in their enthusiasm tried to 



88 OUR NEW EDENS 

make Him their king, He fled away to the moun- 
tains, seeking refuge there with God. He never 
advertised Himself. He did nothing for show. 
Yet think what blessings He left in the world 
as He passed through it. Wherever His feet 
touched the earth, flowers grew in the path. Into 
whatsoever home He entered He carried a breath 
of heaven and left there the benediction of His 
peace. Every life He touched had in it after- 
wards something of beauty or of blessing it never 
had had before. It is now nineteen centuries 
since Jesus walked on the earth in human form, 
and still the influence of His gentle, blessed, quiet 
life fills all the world. 

Which class of men have most deeply impressed 
the world — those who have made the greatest 
noise or the quiet people ? Of course, in the 
records of history the names that are most promi- 
nent are those of kings and warriors and men of 
ambition. But there have always been in the 
world a host of quiet folk who have attracted no 
attention to themselves, who have done no bril- 
liant deeds, whose names have not got into the 
newspapers, but who have touched the world's 
life with the spirit of their own lives. They are 
the lowly ones who dwell near the heart of Christ, 
catch the tone of His life, and then go on living 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 89 

simply and singing the songs of love and peace 
they have learned. 

Yet we all experience the temptation to want 
others to know us and praise us. Many people 
think that if they do not get into official positions, 
or grow rich, or rise to power, or gain newspaper 
notoriety, or make a show in some way among 
men, they have failed in living. But some day it 
will be seen that usually those who have wrought 
quietly and without fame or human praise have 
achieved the noblest and most permanent results. 

" What shall I do lest life in silence pass? 

And if it do 
And never prompt the bray of brass, 

What need' st thou rue ? 
Remember aye the ocean's deeps are mute — 

The shallows roar ; 
Worth is the ocean ; fame is the bruit 

Along the shore." 

Only the other day one came and spoke with 
sadness of what appeared to be a useless life. It 
seemed to have been without result, without 
blessing to others or honor to Christ, because 
nothing great or conspicuous had been done. 
Yet all who know this friend are aware that with 
her quiet life, her victorious cheerfulness, her 
unfailing kindness, she carries benedictions wher- 
ever she goes. 



90 OUR NEW EDEN3 

" Something each day — a word, 

We cannot know its power ; 
It grows in fruitfulness 

As grows the gentle shower. 
What comfort it may bring 

Where all is dark and drear ! 
For a kind word every day 

Makes pleasant all the year. 

" Something each day — a thought, 

Unselfish, good, and true, 
That aids another's needs, 

While we our way pursue ; 
That seeks to lighten hearts, 

That leads to pathways clear ; 
For a helpful thought each day 

Makes happy all the year. 

" Something each day — a deed 

Of kindness and of good, 
To link in closer bonds 

All human brotherhood. 
Oh, thus the heavenly will 

We all may do while here ; 
For a good deed every day 

Makes blessed all the year. ,, 

Much of the best work in this world is done 
unconsciously. Indeed, there is danger always 
that the good deeds we do consciously and with 
intention shall be marred by the very conscious- 
ness with which we do them. There is a legend 
of a good man's shadow which, when it fell 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 91 

behind him where he could not see it, had healing 
power; but which, when it fell before his face, 
where he could see it, had no such power. The 
legend is true in life. There are many quiet 
people who never dream that they are useful at 
all, who even deplore their uselessness, but whose 
days are really full of gentleness and kindness, 
ever setting in motion gentle tides of beneficent 
and heavenly influences which make the whole 
world better, sweetening its air and enriching its 
life. Some day it will be seen that our very best 
work in God's sight is done when we are not 
aware that we are doing any good at all, while 
much that we glory in as the finest achievements 
of our lives will prove to have been of no value 
because filled with self. 

The lives of good people are sometimes com- 
pared to the dew. One point of likeness is the 
quiet way in which the dew performs its ministry. 
It falls silently and imperceptibly. It makes no 
noise. No one hears it dropping. It chooses its 
time in the night when men are sleeping, when 
none can see its beautiful work. It covers the 
leaves with clusters of pearls. It steals into the 
bosoms of the flowers and leaves new cupfuls of 
sweetness there. It pours itself down among the 
roots of the grasses and tender herbs and plants. 



92 OUR NEW EDENS 

It loses itself altogether, and yet it is not lost. 
For in the morning there is fresh life everywhere 
and new beauty. The fields are greener, the gar- 
dens are more fragrant, and all nature is clothed 
in fresh luxuriance. 

Is there not in this simile a suggestion as to 
the way we should seek to do good in this world ? 
Should we not wish to have our influence felt while 
no one thinks of us rather than that we should 
be seen and heard and praised ? Should we not 
be willing to lose ourselves in the service of self- 
forgetful love, as the dew loses itself in the bosom 
of the rose, caring only that other lives shall be 
sweeter, happier, and better, and not that honor 
shall come to us ? We are too anxious, some of 
us, that our names shall be written in large letters 
on the things we do, even on what we do for our 
Master, and are not willing to sink ourselves out 
of sight and let Him only have the praise. 

Our Lord's teaching on the subject is very 
plain. He says : " When therefore thou doest 
alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the 
hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the 
streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily 
I say unto you, They have received their reward." 
That is, they have glory of men — all they seek. 
" But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 93 

know what thy right hand doeth : that thine alms 
may be in secret." 

The meaning would seem to be that we are not 
to wish people to know of our good deeds, our 
charities, our self-denials; that we should not 
seek publicity, newspaper announcements, for 
example, when we give money or do good works ; 
indeed, that we are not even to tell ourselves 
what we have done ; that we are not to think about 
our own good deeds so as to become conscious 
of them ; not to put them down in our diaries 
and go about complimenting ourselves, throwing 
bouquets at ourselves, and whispering: " How 
good I am ! What fine things I have done ! " 

This is a close test of our lives. Are we will- 
ing to be as the dew — to steal abroad in the 
darkness, carrying blessings to men's doors, 
blessings that shall enrich the lives of others and 
do them good, and then steal away again before 
those we have helped or blessed waken to know 
what hand it was that brought the gift ? Are we 
willing to work for others without gratitude, with- 
out recognition, without human praise, without 
requital ? Are we content to have our lives 
poured out like the dew to bless the world and 
make it more fruitful, and yet remain hidden 
away ourselves ? Is it enough for us to see the 



94 OUR NEW EDENS 

fruits of our toil and sacrifice in others' brightened 
homes, greater prosperity and deeper happiness ; 
or in good institutions, in renewed society, in 
benefits prepared by us and enjoyed by others, 
yet never hear our names spoken in praise or 
honor — perhaps even hearing others praised for 
things we have done ? 

Yet, is it not thus that our lesson teaches us we 
are to live if we are followers of Christ? John 
the Baptist, when they asked him who he was, 
said he was only a voice — a voice crying in the 
wilderness, foretelling the Messiah. That was 
humility — hiding away that only Christ should 
be seen and honored. Florence Nightingale, 
having gone as an angel of mercy among the 
hospitals of the Crimea until her name was en- 
shrined in every soldier's heart, asked to be 
excused from having her picture taken, when 
thousands of the men begged for it, that she 
might drop out and be forgotten, and that 
Christ alone might be remembered as the author 
of the blessings her hands had ministered. That 
was the true Christian spirit. 

We need not trouble ourselves about fame, 
trying to make sure of honor and praise when we 
have done anything for the Master. What is 
fame ? At the best, it is likely to be transient. 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 95 

We all know how soon the world forgets even its 
brightest names. A man who has filled a large 
place among his fellows dies to-day. To-morrow 
all the newspapers will give him a notice, longer 
or shorter. Two or three days later his funeral 
occurs and then his name disappears from the 
public prints unless he has so disposed of his 
property that the announcement shall start 
another ripple of publicity. Recently an honored 
railroad president died, and the day he was buried 
every wheel on the great railway system he had 
directed stopped and stood still for ten minutes. 
Then the trains rolled on as before, and the great 
man will scarcely be missed or mentioned here- 
after. 

What an empty thing is fame ! How unsatis- 
factory ! How hard it is to maintain ! How 
fickle it is ! There is a picture of the place of the 
crucifixion of Jesus, with the empty cross, and 
the crowd gone, and over yonder an ass nibbling 
at a piece of withered palm branch. That is the 
way of fame too often. Palm Sunday and Good 
Friday were only five days apart. Says Emily 
Dickinson : — 

Fame is a bee. 

It has a song — 

It has a sting — 

Ah, too, it has a wing. 



96 OUR NEW EDENS 

As one writes : " When death has dropped the 
curtain, we shall hear no more applause. And 
though we fondly dream that it will continue after 
we have left the stage, we do not realize how 
quickly it will die away in silence while the audi- 
ence turns to look at the new actor and the next 
scene. Our position in society will be filled as 
soon as it is vacated, and our name remembered 
only for a moment — except, please God, by a few 
who have learned to love us, not because of fame, 
but because we have helped them and done them 
some good." 

The closing words of this quotation tell us the 
secret of the only fame that is worth living for — 
the fame of love, won not by our great deeds, but 
by service in Christ's name. The only fame that 
will last will be in the records of good done to 
others. Vain was the child's wish that he might 
help God paint the clouds and sunsets, for as we 
watch the glorious banks of clouds in the heavens, 
their form changes and their glory vanishes. But 
if you go about doing good in simple ways, in 
gentle kindnesses, not thinking of reward, not 
dreaming of praise, not hoping for any return, 
you are enshrining your name where it will have 
immortal honor. 

Long, long centuries ago a little fern leaf grew 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 97 

in a valley. Its veins were delicate and its fibers 
tender. It was very lovely in its green tracery. 
But by and by it fell and perished in the indis- 
tinguishable mass of vegetation that lay in the 
valley. It seemed, indeed, lost, for who could 
ever find a fern leaf again amid such heaps of 
decay ? It had made no history and left no trace, 
no impression in the world, had done nothing to 
tell of its brief stay on the earth. 

But the other day a thoughtful man of science, 
searching out nature's secrets, came with pick 
and hammer and broke off a piece of rock — and 
there his eyes traced on the stone — 

" Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, 
Leafage, veining, fibers, clear and fine ; 
And the fern's life lay in every line. 
So, I think, God hides some souls away, 
Sweetly to surprise us at the last day." 

So God hides away the things of love we do in 
the silence, with no thought of reward — hides 
them away in the memories, in the hearts, and in 
the lives of those we help, or bless, or influence 
for good. Nothing done in love and in humility 
will be lost. Fame is transient and ephemeral, 
like the flowers you wear to-day, which will fade 
by to-morrow ; but the touches you put upon 
human lives are immortal. 
7 



98 OUR NEW EDENS 

Those who have learned to live " in quietness 
and in confidence " have found the true secret of 
beautiful living. Confidence ! God loves to be 
trusted. We all love to be trusted. Earth has 
no sweeter joy than when one heart trusts 
another. God is like us in this — trusting Him 
gives Him joy. He has a plan for our lives, a 
plan that takes in all our days and their smallest 
events. " The very hairs of your head are all 
numbered " means not that God actually counts 
our hairs — there would be no use in that — but 
that the smallest things are included in God's 
thought for our lives. One came to me in anxiety 
about the future. This friend has had a good 
position for several years, but the office would be 
closed August thirty-first — in one month — and 
the work would cease. " Then what shall I do ? " 
asked the person. The answer I gave was : 
" God has a plan for your life far beyond August 
thirty-first. His plan takes in all the months 
after that as long as you may live. He will have 
something ready for you when your present task 
is finished." God loves to have us trust Him 
implicitly. The simpler our faith is, the more joy 
it gives Him. And He will never disappoint our 
confidence. 

We do not know how much we grieve God by 



THE BEAUTY OF QUIETNESS 99 

our noisy fretfulness, our peevish complainings, 
our miserable discontents, our sad unbeliefs. Oh, 
for quietness and confidence ! The promise runs : 
M In quietness and in confidence shall be your 
strength.'' Strength — that is just what we need, 
for we are pitiably weak. If only we would get 
quiet and still, God's strength would come into 
our lives. If only we had confidence — that would 
bring us into communion with Christ, and leaning 
on Him, His strength would become ours and 
His peace would hold us quiet and at rest. 

"Oh, the little birds sang east, 
And the little birds sang west, 
And I smiled to think God's greatness 
Flowed round our incompleteness — 
Round our restlessness — His rest." 

When sailors are heaving the anchor, they start 
a song and keep time to the music. When sol- 
diers are going into battle, the bands play martial 
airs to inspire the men. Carlyle said, " Give us, 
oh, give us the man who sings at his work." 
There is tremendous power in a songful heart. 
Quietness and confidence will fill our hearts with 
music, and then we will be strong. 

LofC. 



VI 

THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 



" His servants shall serve Him : and they shall see His face ; 
and His name shall be on their foreheads." — Revelation 



xxn. 3, 4. 



" Jesus taught 
Life beyond this life, timeless, infinite ; 
As little parted from the world we see 
As daytime is from dream-time, when we drowse, 
And think 'tis night with sunlight on our lids." 

— The Light of the World. 



VI 

THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 

In his vision of the holy city John saw much 
that was wonderful. He saw the redeemed in 
their everyday life and had glimpses of their 
glory and their happiness. Among other things 
he tells us, " His servants shall serve Him : and 
they shall see His face ; and His name shall be 
on their foreheads." It is well that we should 
look in upon the beauty and blessedness of the 
heavenly home when we may, that we may know 
something of the glory that is waiting for us. It 
is well that we should see a little of the life and 
the privileges of the saints who are with Christ 
that we may be stimulated and encouraged in our 
struggles and our slow attaining. That is what 
we are going to be by and by. These things 
will be said of us after a while. 

" His servants shall serve Him." That is what 

they do here too — they serve Him. We are set 

here to toil. Our hands are full of tasks. Our 

work is never done. Paul loved to call himself 

103 



104 OUR NEW EDENS 

the servant of Christ. He belonged to Christ 
altogether. Once he gathered all the creeds of 
his life into one great phrase — " Whose I am, 
and whom I serve." The Master's disciples are 
called and sent out to do their Lord's work in 
this world. All our work, even what we call 
secular work, belongs to our serving of Christ. 
" Whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do all in 
the name of the Lord Jesus." The tasks that fill 
our hands through the long days, all are done for 
Christ, if we are really living for Him. We are 
always serving Him, not only when we are 
engaged in some spiritual service, but also when 
we are attending to our business affairs. We all 
have some little part to do also in advancing our 
Master's kingdom. We are to help to carry the 
gospel to every creature. Ease is not to be 
thought of while we stay here. 

But some people suppose that this life of ser- 
vice is only for the earth, and that it will be no 
longer required when we pass into the other life. 
Heaven is thought of by many as a place of 
absolute rest, where the inhabitants will have 
nothing more to do forever. Indeed, in one of 
the beatitudes of the book of The Revelation we 
are told of the blessed dead that when they die in 
the Lord they rest from their labors. But the 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 105 

word " labors " here does not mean things we do 
in love for our Master. It has in it the idea of 
painful toils, cares, anxieties, sufferings. Much 
of earth's work is hard, sometimes bitter. It is 
often unrequited or poorly requited. It is bur- 
densome and oppressive. Many good people 
suffer injustice at the hands of others. There are 
those also who are compelled to work in pain and 
ill health all their days. Then many spend their 
lives in toil and have nothing to show for it at the 
end, nothing gathered for times of adversity and 
need. A great deal of the world's work is full of 
labor and sorrow. 

What the words mean is that the servants of 
Christ shall rest from all that is hard, burden- 
some, and painful in earth's experience. Nothing 
of fret or pain or anguish can enter heaven. 
Whatever is burdensome or oppressive in labor 
will be left behind, but work will be a feature of 
the heavenly life. We are not going into a world 
of idleness when we leave this world. Indeed, 
heaven would not be a heaven to us if we could 
never do anything there. For even in this world 
the sweetest, deepest, purest joy of life is that 
which we find in doing good, in serving others. 
This was Christ's own sweetest joy. He came to 
earth to serve. He loved, and love's deepest joy 



106 OUR NEW EDENS 

always comes in helping, blessing, comforting 
others. He bequeathed His joy to us, and so we 
find our holiest joy, as He found His, in serving. If 
we have not learned this secret, we have one of life's 
sweetest lessons yet to learn in beginning to serve. 
There is a beautiful legend which tells that one 
shepherd was kept at home watching a fevered 
guest the night the angels came to Bethlehem 
with the announcement of the birth of Jesus. 
The other shepherds saw the heavenly host, 
heard their song, and beheld the glory. Return- 
ing home, their hearts were wonderfully elated. 
But all the night Shemuel sat alone by the rest- 
less sufferer and waited. His fellow-shepherds 
pitied him because he had missed the vision and 
the glory which they had seen. But in his patient 
serving he had found blessing and reward of his 
own. He had missed, indeed, the splendor of 
that night in the fields, and in his serving he gave 
up his own life, for the fever-poison touched him 
and he died. But he had tasted the joy of sacri- 
fice, and then his eyes saw a more wondrous glory 
when he entered the Divine presence. 

" Shemuel, by the fever-bed, 
Touched by beckoning hands that led, 
Died and saw the Uncreated ; 
All his fellows lived and waited." 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 107 

So it always is in life in this world. Those who 
sit by fever-beds, denying themselves the ease 
and indulgence which others seek, while they 
minister to human need, seem to miss much that 
is very beautiful. Their gentle ministry keeps 
them away from places of privilege, even from 
scenes of spiritual ecstasy. Their duty is to nurse 
the sick. Or they are mothers, caring for little 
children. While at their common tasks, they see 
not the angel hosts nor hear their songs. They 
are kept away from scenes of earthly gladness 
and joy. Their mission is to serve. But mean- 
while they have their own reward — the sweet, 
sacred joy which comes into the hearts of those 
who love and serve in Christ's name. 

" His servants shall serve Him." That is, in 
the other life. They have served Him here, and 
they will continue to serve Him in heaven. 
What their work there will be we do not know. 
We are told that the saints in glory will be as the 
angels. Angels serve. They are ministering 
spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salva- 
tion in this world. In the Scriptures we have 
many glimpses of angels at their work — cheering, 
helping, delivering, guiding God's children — 
always serving. If we are to be as the angels, we 
shall serve. Angels are sent everywhere to carry 



108 OUR NEW EDENS 

messages of comfort, cheer, and help. Why may 
we not be sent to this or other worlds on min- 
istries of love ? 

We are told that in heaven we shall be like 
Christ, and He served. His life was an unbroken 
service of love. Of all the portraits of the Master 
in the New Testament, none is more characteristic 
than that one which shows Him girt with the 
towel and with the basin in His hand, washing 
His disciples' feet. " I am among you as He that 
serveth," He said. He went about His tasks 
doing good. His days were all filled with kind- 
ness. We have accounts of a few great miracles 
wrought by Him, but all His hours and moments 
were filled with little words and deeds of love. 
He was always serving. For every one He met 
His heart yearned ; to every pain and sorrow His 
compassion went out ; and to every human need 
His hand was reached forth to help. He said He 
came to do the work of His Father, and that was 
love's work. He passed into heaven at the time 
of His ascension, but He did not cease to show 
kindness. Luke, referring to Christ's stay on 
earth, says that in that time He " began both to 
do and to teach." He only began His ministry 
of love. We do not see Him now going on our 
streets helping, comforting, cheering, but He has 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 109 

never ceased His activity in this world. He con- 
tinues to serve. 

" So still, dear Lord, in every place 
Thou standest by the toiling folk, 

With love and pity in Thy face, 

And givest of Thy help and grace 

To those who meekly bear the yoke." 

If we are to be like Christ in heaven, surely we 
shall serve too as He does. We have one in- 
stance in the Scriptures of saints from heaven 
coming back to earth to serve. Jesus was setting 
out on His journey to the cross. The burden on 
Him was very heavy. His heart was tender and 
the road before Him was indeed a sorrowful way. 
He did not shrink, but He needed comfort. So 
one night two glorious beings were sent from 
their abode in heaven to talk with Him and to 
encourage Him. These were Moses and Elijah. 
They had been centuries at home with God. 
Now they came back to earth to strengthen the 
Son of man in His hour of need. 

May not this one recorded instance of such 
serving mean to us that others who have passed 
into heaven also shall be sent back to earth on 
errands of love to those who need them in their 
struggles and sorrows ? We do not know — we 
cannot tell, but if such service was rendered once. 



no OUR NEW EDENS 

may it not be done again ? May not others of 
Christ's servants be sent to this world to bring 
help, cheer, encouragement to those who are weary 
or troubled or faint? Of this, at least, we are 
sure — that in heaven " His servants shall serve 
Him." Death does not interrupt life, nor does it 
end life's work. We shall have more love in our 
hearts in heaven than we ever have here, and love 
always serves. Love would die if it had no 
opportunity to help, to render aid, to do good. 
All our training in this world is toward useful- 
ness. We are taught that we are to do good to 
all men, to bear one another's burdens, to be sons 
of consolation, to help the weak, to guard and 
keep other lives. Surely all this training is not 
for earth only. In some way in heaven we will 
continue serving Christ by serving others. Indeed, 
at the best, our life here is but a school of prac- 
tice in which we are trained for the real work 
which it will be ours to do in the immortal years. 
" His servants shall serve Him." 

" And they shall see His face." In this world 
we do not see. our Lord's face. He is with us, 
but we do not see Him. We endure as seeing 
Him who is invisible, but no one ever saw God in 
this world. The Bible tells us, however, that we 
shall have the "beatific vision" in heaven. We 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD in 

have this in Job : " After my skin, even this body, 
is destroyed, then without my flesh shall I see 
God." In one of the Psalms we read : — 

" As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness ; 
I shall be satisfied, when I awake > with beholding Thy form." 

One of our Lord's Beatitudes reads : " Blessed 
are the pure in heart : for they shall see God." 
John says that in heaven we shall be like Christ, 
for we shall see Him as He is. One day we shall 
slip away from these scenes of earth. Our eyes 
shall be closed on all familiar things. Next 
moment — O rapture ! they will be opened on the 
unveiled face of Jesus Christ. v That is what death 
will be to you if you are God's child. You may 
dread it, but it is only going to look at your 
Redeemer's face. 

' ' From the dust of the weary highway, 

From the smart of sorrow' s rod, 
Into the royal presence, 

They are bidden as guests of God. 
The veil from their eyes is taken, 

Sweet mysteries they are shown ; 
Their doubt and fears are over, 

For they know as they are known." 

The bliss of heaven will be largely in being 
with Christ, in seeing His face, in enjoying His 
companionship, His friendship. 



H2 OUR NEW EDENS 

The words, " they shall see His face/' suggest 
that this will be the inspiration of the heavenly 
service. We know what a benediction the face 
of a loved and honored human friend is to us as 
we go out on any hard task or dangerous duty. 
There are men whose " God bless you " makes us 
braver and stronger for days. One said, speaking 
of a dear and noble friend, " To meet him in the 
morning and have his smile brightens all the 
hours of the day for me." What will it be in 
heaven to look into Christ's face of love in the 
morning and to have His smile ! 

To see the face of Christ is also a token of high 
honor. Not many people are admitted to the pres- 
ence of a king. Only his favorites and those high 
in rank have this privilege. But in heaven all Christ's 
servants shall see His face. That is, they shall be 
admitted to the closest fellowship and shall have 
all the privileges of intimate friends. 

What a blessed moment it will be when we are 
ushered into the presence of Christ ! No wonder 
Saint Paul says, " To depart and be with Christ 
. ... is very far better." This is a beautiful 
world — it is part of our Father's house. It is 
wondrously adorned. It is sweet to live here, 
with human love to surround us with its gentle- 
ness. But it will be very far better to be with 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 113 

Christ, serving close by His side, looking into 
His face as we come and go. Miss Willard's last 
words were, " How beautiful to be with God ! " 
and one writes : — 

" Then let it fade, this dream of earth, 
When I have done my life-work here, 
Or long, or short, as seemeth best — 
What matters, so God's will appear? 

" I will not fear to launch my bark 
Upon the darkly rolling flood, 
'Tis but to pierce the mist — and then, 
How beautiful to be with God ! ' ' 

" His name shall be on their foreheads. " l 

1 Recently I received a letter from Henry G. Weston, D.D., 
LL. D., President of the Crozer Baptist Theological Semi- 
nary. Dr. Weston is eminent as one of the most honored ex- 
positors of the Bible in this country. Well past eighty years 
of age, he is still active in all good work for his Master. He is 
a man greatly beloved. His friendship for me, shown in many 
ways along the years, has been an inspiration and a help beyond 
measure. In the letter referred to, Dr. Weston writes : — 

" My thoughts have clustered at odd times about Revelation 
xxii. 3, 4. ■ His servants shall . . . see His face ; and His name 
shall be on their foreheads.' The reflection will be visible to all 
who look upon them, but will be unseen by themselves. That 
they are Christ's is evident to all, but of this they themselves are 
unconscious." 

This sermon has been prepared, therefore, at Dr. Weston's 
request. The thought which he specially notes regarding the 
name on the forehead is very beautiful. 
8 



ii4 OUR NEW EDENS 

Name in the Bible stands for character. A man's 
name gathers into itself all that the man is. 
When you hear the name of any one mentioned, 
any one you know, or any one of whom you have 
heard much, the man's whole personality rises 
before your mind. So the name of God includes 
all that is revealed of God's character. To us it 
means all that God is to us. When it is said here 
that " His name shall be on their foreheads," the 
thought is that the Divine likeness is imprinted 
there. 

There is evidently a close connection, too, be- 
tween what is said in the second clause of the 
verse and the third. " His servants . . . shall see 
His face ; and " therefore " His name shall be on 
their foreheads." While His servants look upon 
the brightness of their Master's face its beauty is 
imprinted upon them. That is what the beloved 
disciple says in one of his epistles, " We shall be 
like Him ; for we shall see Him even as He is." 
Looking upon Christ makes us like Him. 

Saint Paul teaches the same truth in a remark- 
able passage in one of his epistles. " We all, 
with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the 
glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
image from glory to glory, even as from the 
Lord the Spirit." This transformation is not a 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 115 

heavenly matter altogether — it will be completed 
there, when, all veils removed, we shall look 
directly into the face of Christ ; but it is something 
for our earthly life too. It begins here, and it 
goes on, the likeness coming out ever more and 
more fully and clearly as we know more and 
more about Christ. Companionship with Him, 
communion with Him, looking into His face, 
prints upon us His likeness. Every day, if we 
live as we should, some new line of His beauty 
comes out on our faces. 

But we must notice where the name of God is 
printed — " on their foreheads." The suggestion 
of Dr. Weston is very beautiful — the name is 
where others can see it, but where it is not seen 
by the person himself. You cannot see your 
own forehead, and you are not aware of the 
nobleness or the brightness that others see there. 
This unconsciousness of the radiance on the face 
is part of the splendor ; being aware of it would 
dim the brightness. We know that when any 
one is conscious of the beauty or the refinement 
stamped on his face, a great part of the beauty 
or the refinement is gone. So self-consciousness 
mars spiritual loveliness. When a man knows 
that he is humble, he is no longer humble. The 
man who is truly poor in spirit is not himself 



n6 OUR NEW EDENS 

aware of the shining of his life, the splendor of 
his deeds, the power of his words, or of his minis- 
tries. The best people are always the least con- 
scious of their goodness and worth. Others see 
the shining, but they do not. 

There is a beautiful legend 1 which tells of a 
saintly man who was greatly beloved of the 
angels, who had seen much of his godly life on 
the earth. The angels asked God to give their 
favorite some new power, some fresh mark of the 
Divine favor, some new gift or ability, which would 
make him still more useful. They were told 
to see the man and ask him what special power 
he would like to have bestowed upon him. The 
angels visited him and asked him what gift he 
would choose. He said he was content and 
wanted nothing more. They pressed him to 
name something which God might do for him 
or give to him. Would he not like power to 
work miracles ? He said No — that was Christ's 
work. Would he not like power to lead many 
souls to Christ? He answered No — it was the 
Holy Spirit's work to lead men to the Saviour. 

The angels in their eagerness still begged him 
to name something which they might ask God to 
grant to him. At last he answered that if he 

1 Used in the author's " The Master's Blesseds," chapter i. 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 117 

must choose any new power he would like the 
ability to do a great deal of good among men 
without even knowing it. So it was granted that 
from that day his shadow, when it fell behind him 
where he could not see it, had wondrous healing 
power, but when it fell before his face where he 
could see it, it had no such power. 

The legend teaches its own lesson. When a 
Christian is aware of the beauty of the Lord 
upon him, the beauty is dimmed. We are pre- 
pared for the largest usefulness when we are 
unconscious of our preparation. " His name 
shall be on their foreheads/' Others will see it 
shining there. This will be true in the heavenly 
life. "We shall be like Him." All the re- 
deemed and all the angels will see the glory of 
the Lord on the face of each saint. 

The same is true also of every sincere believer 
in this world. He bears the image of his Lord 
upon his life. This is not some mystic mark 
that no one can understand — it is the beauty of 
holiness. When we study the gospels and see 
Christ Himself, we learn what that name is which 
shines on the forehead of His friends. It is 
nothing mysterious or occult — it is patience, 
gentleness, thoughtfulness, humility, kindness, 
the spirit of forgiveness, meekness, peace, joy, 



n8 OUR NEW EDENS 

goodness. People have no difficulty in discover- 
ing the marks of Jesus on those who wear them. 
But the holy ones themselves do not know that 
this blessed name is burning with such brightness 
on their brows. They are surprised when others 
speak of the beauty of the Lord upon them. 

We remember it was said of Moses, when he 
came down from the mount from speaking with 
God, that his face was shining — the Divine glory 
lingered there. His face was so bright that the 
people were afraid to come near him, and he had to 
put a veil over it while he talked with them. But it 
is said also that Moses knew not that his face shone. 

We get a lesson in humility. Let us not think 
of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. 
Let us not think of our goodness, our devout- 
ness, our worthy deeds, our helpful services at 
all. Especially, let us never talk of our virtues, 
our piety, of what we have done. We should 
seek to be full of the Spirit of God, but the 
Spirit does not mean to glorify us — He would 
honor Christ. We are to pray, " Let the beauty 
of the Lord our God be upon us " ; but we 
should seek to have it shining where we may not 
see it, where it may honor God Himself. We 
are too apt to be conscious of our power and to 
assert ourselves before men in ways that hinder 



THE NAME ON THE FOREHEAD 119 

our usefulness and lessen our influence. " Let 
your light shine before men," said the Master, 
" that they may see your good works, and glorify 
your Father " — not you. 

How shall we reach the blessedness of which 
these words from the Apocalypse give us a 
glimpse ? These servants of God, serving Him, 
beholding His face, wearing His glory on their 
foreheads, seem far beyond us. They have 
climbed up the mountain to its summit while we 
are still toiling away among the lowest foothills. 
How can we ever attain the lofty height where 
they appear? There is only one way — Christ. 
This blessedness must begin here or we never 
shall reach it there. Heaven must come down to 
us, into our hearts, or we never can enter heaven. 
These noble features of the heavenly home are 
for the Christian life of earth as well as the per- 
fected life of glory. We must begin now to 
realize them. We must be Christ's here — doing 
His will, going where He bids us go, busy in 
ministries of love in His name. We must see 
His face, dwell in His presence, enjoy His friend- 
ship here. We must bear His name on our 
foreheads, these common days, where the world 
may see it. We must be Christ's now or we 
cannot enter Christ's home and glory hereafter. 



VII 

THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 



" David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me water 
to drink of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! And 
the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, 
and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the 
gate, and took it, and brought it to David : but he would not 
drink thereof, but poured it out unto Jehovah. And he said, Be 
it far from me, O Jehovah, that I should do this : shall I drink 
the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? 
therefore he would not drink it." — II. Samuel xxiii. 15—17. 

" Measure thy life by loss instead of gain ; 
Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth ; 
For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice ; 
And whoso suffers most has most to give." 

— Ugo BassVs Sermon. 



VII 

THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 

The story of David longing for water from the 
well by the gate is very beautiful. There are 
several interesting and profitable suggestions in 
it. One is the influence of childhood memories 
and associations over the life in the days of 
strength and maturity. David and his men were 
in the cave of Adullam. Over yonder was Beth- 
lehem, the home of David's boyhood. He knew 
every spot. He had played over the fields. He 
had led his sheep into every nook, along every 
path. Probably it was not so much thirst for 
water as homesickness that forced from him that 
day the cry, " Oh that one would give me water 
to drink of the well . . . which is by the gate !" 

It is easy to understand David's longing. The 
memories of our childhood home tug at our 
hearts through all our years. There is great 
keeping power in such love for the old home. 
While the picture of the familiar rooms, the faces 
at the fireside, at the table, and at the family 

123 



124 OUR NEW EDENS 

worship, and the recollections of the lessons, the 
songs, the talks — while these abide, with their 
sacred suggestions and associations, it is not easy 
to drift far away into wrong. The heart that 
cherishes no such memories, recalls no such a 
past, in which there is no hallowed shrine of 
recollection, has lost much. 

Another suggestion in this story is the love of 
these three men for their chief. The moment 
they heard his wish for a drink of water from the 
old well they determined to get it for him. The 
well was in the hands of the enemy, and it was 
impossible to bring the water without peril and 
cost. Yet so strong was their love for David 
that they went through armed ranks and brought 
it. This reminds us of what Christ did to bring 
to His friends the water of life from the old well 
of salvation. One of the noblest of the old 
litanies tells the story well : — " By the cold crib 
in which Thou didst lie, have mercy upon us. 
By Thy flight into Egypt and all the pains Thou 
didst suffer there ; by Thy thirst, hunger, cold, and 
heat, in this vale of Thy misery ; by the inward 
and great heaviness which Thou hadst when 
praying in the garden, and by the spitting on 
Thee and the scourging; by Thy purple gar- 
ments and Thy crown of thorns ; by the nailing 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 125 

of Thy right hand to the cross, and the shedding 
of Thy most precious blood ; by the nailing of 
Thy left hand, and that most holy wound — 
purge, enlighten, and reconcile us to God. By the 
lifting up of Thy most holy body on the cross ; 
by the bitterness of Thy death and its intolerable 
pains ; by Thy glorious resurrection ; by Thy 
glorious and wondrous ascension — have mercy 
upon us!" 

Everything about our redemption reminds us 
of what it cost our Saviour to bring it to us. He 
stopped at no sacrifice, because He loved us to 
the uttermost. 

Then there is a suggestion here of what other 
friends besides Christ do for those they love. 
Next to the love of Christ, the most precious 
thine in all the world is human love. And how 
often does it repeat the story of devotion, and at 
cost and danger bring cups of water from far-off 
springs for those who are thirsty ! We do not 
begin to know what we owe to our friends who 
are always doing things for us. 

Then there is a suggestion of our duty to those 
about us who have their longings, their needs, 
their hungers, their discouragements, their sor- 
rows. The cry of thirsty hearts falls continually 
upon our ears. " Oh that one would give me 



126 OUR NEW EDENS 

water to drink of the well of Bethlehem ! " There 
are many unhappy people, unsatisfied people, in 
this world — there are those who are in sorrow, 
those who hunger for love. We may not hear 
their cries, for they cry in silence. But we are 
needed continually to run to the well of Beth- 
lehem to bring cups of water for those about us 
who are thirsty. 

There is a society in one of our great cities, 
formed to help the poor, whose aim is said to be 
to give to every family a friend — some one who 
will take an interest in the household, visit the 
home, and bring into it human sympathy, love, 
cheer, and gentle kindness. We never can know 
what it means to some families to give them a 
friend — true, wise, strong, and helpful. No other 
way of helping people anywhere, rich or poor, 
refined or rude, good or bad, is half so Divine as 
by being a friend to them. One of the fine things 
we learn from the story of Saint Paul is the duty 
and privilege of being a friend to men. His heart 
craved friends, but he also longed to be a friend 
to every one. He helped people by becoming 
their friend. We are taught continually that we 
ought to love Christ — and the lesson cannot be 
taught too often or too earnestly, nor the blessing 
of loving Christ extolled too highly ; but if we 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 127 

would do any real good we must love people too 
in this world. That is the way Christ helps 
men — by loving them. Then if we really love 
Christ, we cannot but love others — the one love 
always begets the other. 

An ancient writer said of another : " He was a 
friend to man, and he lived in a house by the side 
of a road." He lived by the roadside because he 
wanted to be near people, that he might be their 
friend and help them. There are some who do 
not care to bother with others. They like to be 
very conventional neighbors. They do not want 
to be troubled in helping people. But they do 
not know what opportunities of doing good they 
are missing — what opportunities also of joy for 
themselves. The deepest happiness in this world 
is found in being a friend to others. It was the 
joy of helping men, of saving them, of serving 
them, of being their friend, of bringing them cups 
of water from the well of heaven, that filled the 
heart of Christ and enabled Him to endure the 
cross and despise the shame. 

A church visitor went every month to take 
some money to a poor woman who lived alone 
and was not able to leave her little house. The 
old woman received the visitor very kindly, and 
as she was going away, said, " I thank you very 



128 OUR NEW EDENS 

much for the money — it will pay my rent ; but I 
thank you far more for your visit. What I want 
most is not money, but folks." Her heart was 
hungry for human sympathy. If you get near 
enough to people, you will hear every day long- 
ings and yearnings like this of David, " Oh that 
one would give me water to drink of the well of 
Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! " 

No other well in all the world has in it such 
water as has the well of Bethlehem which is by 
the gate. This water is the love of Christ, the 
grace of God, of which if a man drink he shall 
never thirst any more. When you run to this 
well of Bethlehem you will find no armed guards 
to keep you away. Sometimes in the country 
you will come to a wayside spring with a little 
cup hanging by it. The cup means that the water 
is free and that whosoever is thirsty may drink. 
You may drink freely yourself from the well of 
Bethlehem. But the water is not for you only. 
There is another near you who is thirsty too, 
waiting for you to give the cup to him in the 
Master's name. 

" That plenty but reproaches me 
Which leaves my brother bare ; 
Not wholly glad my heart can be 
While his is bowed with care." 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 129 

We have another suggestion in the way David 
received the water which his friends brought to 
him. He said their heroic love and achievement 
for him made the water sacred, hallowed it. He 
dared not use it for the mere gratifying of his own 
personal thirst. It could be fitly honored only by 
giving it to God. So he poured it out as an offer- 
ing, an oblation, to God. David's act has its sug- 
gestions for us. 

One is that the best part of a noble deed is its 
motive. The finest thing in kindness is not the 
act, which may be very simple, but the thoughtful 
love which inspires the kindness. An old writer 
said, " You can paint fire, but you cannot paint 
heat." It is not the mere flame as a picture that 
warms you, but the warmth, which you cannot 
see, which makes no picture. The act of the 
three brave men was heroic. It would have been 
heroic if done as an adventure or to receive praise 
or reward of men. But the noble quality in the 
deed was not merely what people saw — the dash 
through the enemy's lines, the dipping up of the 
water in the face of the guards, and the return 
again with it to the cave. The really noble thing 
in the act was the love for David which inspired 
it. 

Always, in all life, it is true that it is the motive 
9 



130 OUR NEW EDENS 

which gives value to our acts. One man builds a 
hospital or a home for orphans. He does it be- 
cause he wants to be known as generous and 
philanthropic. The motive which God sees is 
self-love, the desire to get honor from men. The 
deed itself seems very large to human eyes. It is 
a noble charity. It will be praised by men. The 
newspapers will make a great deal of it, and the 
man who built it will be honored by his fellows. 
But large as the great institution bulks in the 
world, all that appears in God's eyes is a little 
picture of a man trying to glorify himself, to get 
his name honored. There will be a good deal of 
shrinking and shriveling when some day we get 
to see all things as they are. Some large things 
— large in earthly seeming — will be pitifully small 
then. 

But there is another side to this. A lowly man 
does a little thing — a little act in itself. It is only 
a simple kindness — a cup of cold water given to 
one who is thirsty. But the motive is love, and 
that makes it shine in bright radiance, like a trans- 
figuration, in heaven's sight. Great gifts were 
dropped into the treasury that day when the 
Master was watching how men gave. But the 
only gift He praised was the widow's offering of a 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 131 

farthing. He said it was greater than any of the 
others. The motive made the difference. 

The same is true in all life. We should not do 
good to get men's praise. If we work from this 
motive, we shall have just what we work for, but 
nothing else. Men will praise us, but God will 
not. All there really is of any work, even the 
greatest, is the part that lies hidden in the worker's 
heart. Many men's lives, therefore, are very 
much smaller in heaven's sight than they appear 
to their fellows to be. Then there are many 
whose lives are a thousand times more beautiful, 
more radiant and noble as God sees them, than 
they are as the world sees them. Love in them 
glorifies them. 

This truth has wide application. It is not the 
part which men see that is most important in any 
one's life. Love glorified the deed of bravery 
wrought by David's three friends and made it 
holy as a sacrament. It is love that glorifies 
whatever is pleasing to God in our lives. One 
person sings a hymn and it is only a common 
song breathed into the air. Another standing 
close by sings it and it is holy worship, and 
carries up to God a heart's incense of praise. 
One performs an act of kindness from a selfish 
motive, and while it may give comfort to one or 



132 OUR NEW EDENS 

to many it is only a common deed. Another 
performs an act just like it, but with love as its 
inspiration, and it is a sacrifice to God, acceptable 
and pleasing to Him. The difference is in the 
hearts of those who perform the deeds. We 
would better do even the smallest things in love 
and thus lift them up into radiant beauty than do 
large and conspicuous things to glorify ourselves. 
There is an eastern story of a king who built a 
great temple at his own cost, no other one being 
allowed to do even the smallest part of the work. 
The king's name was put upon the temple as the 
builder of it. But, strange to say, when the dedi- 
cation day came it was seen that a poor widow's 
name was there in place of the king's. The king 
was angry and gave command that the woman 
bearing the name on the scroll should be found. 
They discovered her at last among the very poor 
and brought her before the king. He demanded 
of her what she had done toward the building of 
the temple. She said, " Nothing." When pressed 
to remember anything she had done, she said 
that one day when she saw the oxen drawing the 
great stones past her cottage, exhausted in the 
heat and very weary, she had in pity given them 
some wisps of hay. And this simple kindness to 
dumb animals, prompted by a heart's compassion, 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 133 

weighed more in God's sight than all the king's 
vast outlay of money. What we truly do for 
Christ and in love is glorious in His sight. 

There is another suggestion in David's way of 
receiving the water. He would not even taste it 
himself. He gave it to God. That which made 
the water so sacred in David's sight was its cost 
and the love that prompted the heroic act. We 
get the lesson, that whatever comes to us through 
the pain and peril of others, or through blood 
and sacrifice, is thereby made sacred, and should 
not be used in any self-indulgence, but should be 
given to God. 

The story of national life illustrates this princi- 
ple. Progress is costly. Whatever is great and 
noble and worthy is the fruit of sacrifice. It is the 
story of David's cup of water over again — it is the 
blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their 
lives, or who gave their lives. Our great Chris- 
tian nations are what they are to-day because of 
long records of sacrifice. 

There is a picture which tells the story of a 
troop of soldiers in northern India. They 
marched forth bravely in the faultless attire of a 
holiday. Their guns were polished, their gloves 
were spotless in their whiteness. A fortnight 
passed and there had come no word from these 



134 OUR NEW EDENS 

brave men. One morning the sentinel on the 
wall saw a solitary horseman on the horizon. 
Slowly he moved along the road. The garrison 
went out to meet him, supposing it must be a 
messenger from the absent army. Evidently 
some misfortune had befallen this soldier. His 
horse was so weary that its head drooped almost 
to the ground. The messenger himself, it was 
seen, had been hurt. A crimson cloth was bound 
round his forehead. His hair was matted with 
blood. His hands were wounded. He was 
faint, almost unconscious. As the men of the 
garrison drew near, the officer in the lead shouted : 
" The army ! What news of the army ? " The 
soldier, rousing himself from his half stupor, and 
lifting his bleeding hand to put back his matted 
locks, replied: "The army! Why, I am the 
army ! " He was the only man left to come back 
of all that gay company that had gone forth. 

This has been the story of many a patriotic 
army. Thousands went forth and only a little 
handful returned. We should not forget the cost 
of the blessings, the liberties, the institutions, the 
prosperities which mean so much in our best 
modern life. What did David do with the water 
whose cost made it holy ? He gave it to God. 
An element of all worthy patriotism is loyalty to 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 135 

God. Good citizenship is part of all full-rounded 
religion. It is not enough for Christian men to 
be honest and true and incorruptible — they must 
be positive forces for good in the community in 
which they live. We should be strong for God 
and for truth and right. 

" Be strong ! 
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift ; 
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
Shun not the struggle ; face it. 'Tis God's fight. 

" Be strong ! 
Say not the days are evil — ' Who's to blame ? ' — 
And fold the hands and acquiesce. O shame ! 
Stand up, speak out and bravely, in God' s name. 

" Be strong ! 
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong, 
How hard the battle goes, the day, how long ; 
Faint not, fight on ! To-morrow comes the song." 

If the cost of our national blessings makes 
them so sacred, what shall we say of the bless- 
ings of Christianity ? They come to us without 
price ; but there was One who paid an infinite 
price to procure them for us. Dare we spend on 
ourselves these precious gifts of redeemed life ? 
We will deal with them worthily only when we 
give them all to God. 



136 OUR NEW EDENS 

" I will away and find my God, 
And what I dare not keep ask Him to take, 
And taking, love's sweet sacrifice to make; 
Then, like a wave, the sorrow and the pain 
High heaven with glory flood — 
For them, for all, a splendid gain." 



This oldtime story suggests to us also what are 
the really great things in life, the things that 
endure. Noble deeds are great. It has been a 
long time since those three friends of David's 
went forth on their brave errand. But the world 
has been blessed all these thirty centuries by the 
story of their heroism. The telling of the story 
again to-day has started noble impulses in our 
breasts, and we will be better to-morrow for 
learning anew the devotion of these heroic men. 

Another of the great things of life is service, 
service prompted by love. Life is made worth 
while only by love. The heroism in David's 
men was splendid, but it was their love for their 
chief that gave the true glory to their deed. The 
things we do for love are the things that will live. 
" Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three ; and 
the greatest of these is love. ,, All that love does 
is immortal. 

Another great thing is worship ; that is, the 
consecration of life's avails and fruits to God. We 



THE TRUE GLORY OF LIFE 137 

are not living truly till we recognize our supreme 
obligation to God. To leave God out of our life 
is to leave out blessing, joy, hope, and heaven. 
No life has found its true place in the universe till 
it has given itself to God. Then day by day, 
whatever new gift, power, or possession comes to 
us, we should promptly lay it on God's altar. We 
become great only when we link our little lives to 
the great infinite Life. 

The life that is given up to God in true devo- 
tion need fear nothing. We may have our sor- 
rows, our disappointments, our losses, but if all 
our life is in the hands of God, no harm can come 
to us. In all the events and experiences of our 
strangest days it is life, character, that God is 
making in us. Very beautiful is the figure of the 
loom. God is the weaver. He has before Him 
the pattern into which He would fashion our 
lives. Some threads are white, some are dark, 
but the great Weaver will blend them so that the 
finished work will be beautiful. 

" Children of yesterday, 
Heirs of to-morrow, 
What are you weaving ? 
Labor or sorrow ? 
Look at your looms again ; 



138 OUR NEW EDENS 

Faster and faster 
Fly the great shuttles 
Prepared by the Master. 
Life's is the loom ; 
Room for it — room. 

" Children of yesterday, 
Heirs of to-morrow, 
Lighten the labor 
And sweeten the sorrow ; 
Now, while the shuttles fly 
Faster and faster, 
Up and be at it — 
At work with the Master ; 
He stands at your loom — 
Room for Him — room. 

" Children of yesterday, 
Heirs of to-morrow, 
Look at your fabric 
Of labor and sorrow, 
Seamy and dark 
With despair and disaster ; 
Turn it — and lo, 
The design of the Master ! 
The Lord's at the loom ; 
Room for Him — room." 



VIII 
GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 



"Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." — Ephesians iv. 30. 

" Spirit of purity and grace, 

Our weakness, pitying, see : 
Oh, make our hearts Thy dwelling place, 
And worthier Thee." 



VIII 

GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 

We are exhorted not to grieve the Divine 
Spirit. So the Spirit is a person, not a mere 
influence. You cannot grieve an influence. You 
may resist it, but it will not care, will not feel 
hurt. You can grieve a person, however, give 
him pain, and the Holy Spirit is a person with 
feelings, affections, and a heart that can be pained, 
like your mother's. 

The Holy Spirit is also your friend. You can- 
not grieve a person who dislikes you or is indif- 
ferent to you. But when one loves you, cares 
for you, is deeply interested in you, you grieve 
him if you do not trust him, if you do not prove 
faithful and true, if you treat him ungratefully 
or unkindly, if you slight or despise his love. 
There are children who grieve their parents. 
There are persons who grieve their friends. 
Perhaps there never is love that is not hurt 
sometimes, many times — we all are so heedless, 
so ignorant, so thoughtless, such blunderers in 

living and loving. 

141 



142 OUR NEW EDENS 

Now we may grieve the Holy Spirit of God, 
for He loves us. We do not think often of the 
love of the Spirit. We know that the Father 
loves us, for He gave His only begotten Son to 
redeem us. We know that the Son of God loves 
us : His coming to this world in the Incarnation 
and all His wonderful life of service and sacrifice 
for us proved His love. But we do not speak 
much of the love of the Spirit. Yet His love is 
no less than that of the Father or the Son. 
Think how He follows us patiently and un- 
weariedly in all our wanderings, through all our 
unfaithfulness, never giving us up until He gets 
us home at last. Think how He makes us His 
companions, entering into closest relations of 
friendship with us. 

We speak of the condescension of the Son of 
God in coming to earth and living in a human 
body in a world of sin and sorrow, meeting the 
conditions of ignorance, enmity, unbelief, rejec- 
tion, and wrong. Have you ever thought of the 
condescension of the Holy Spirit in living with 
us, not three years only, but continually? We 
are told, too, that He lives in us. " Your body 
is a temple of the Holy Spirit." What kind of 
a place is your heart for the Holy Spirit to live 
in ? Think of all the evil there is in it. Think 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 143 

of the unholy thoughts, feelings, desires, affec- 
tions, of the rebellions, the insubmissions, the 
brood of unclean things there are in your heart. 
Now into that heart the Holy Spirit comes, not 
for a transient visit, as when some pure and 
gentle woman goes into a place of wretchedness 
and degradation for half an hour on an errand of 
mercy, but to make His home there, to live there 
until He has changed all the evil into good. Do 
you not think that the love of the Holy Spirit in 
making our hearts His home for all the years of 
our life is quite as wonderful as was the love of 
Christ in spending His three and thirty years in 
this world ? The Holy Spirit loves us tenderly, 
yearningly, infinitely. 

Now we may grieve this Holy Spirit whose 
heart is so gentle and w T ho loves us so. Nathaniel 
Hawthorne had a little daughter called Una, who 
often made up stories for her younger brother. 
One day she was overheard telling him of a boy 
who was very naughty. M He grew naughtier 
and naughtier," said the child, " and every day 
naughtier still, until at last — at last — he struck 
God!" That was terrible! But there are many, 
many people who do strike God not once only, 
but again and again. The Holy Spirit is God. 
" Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." 



144 OUR NEW EDENS 

We must remember that this counsel is ad- 
dressed to Christians, not to the impenitent. Of 
course, the impenitent grieve the Holy Spirit too, 
for He comes to them with His beseeching love, 
and they resist His pleadings and His entreaties. 
His mission to the impenitent is to urge them to 
accept Jesus Christ. So long as they refuse to 
do this, rejecting the Saviour who died for them, 
they hurt the heart of the Holy Spirit. Mrs. 
Stowe tells of the knocking at the door and the 
call to open, and then in wondrously pathetic 
words asks — 

Did she open ? Doth she ? Will she ? 
So, as wondering we behold, 
Grows the picture to a sign, 
Pressed upon your soul and mine ; 
For in every breast that liveth 
Is that strange, mysterious door ; 
Though forsaken and betangled, 
Ivy-gnarled and weed-bej angled, 
Dusty, rusty, and forgotten- — 
There the pierced hand still knocketh ; 
And with ever-patient watching, 
With the sad eyes true and tender, 
With the glory-crowned hair — 
Still a God is waiting there. 

This surely is a startling picture for those who 
have never yet accepted of Jesus Christ as their 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 145 

personal Saviour — God kept waiting and patiently 
knocking outside their door. It would grieve 
you to have any one treat you so — when you had 
gone with love in your heart to do some one 
good, to show a great kindness — to be shut out, 
to get no response to your knocking. Yet that 
is the way many people treat the Holy Spirit for 
years and years. 

But the exhortation against grieving the Spirit 
is for those who have opened the door, admitting 
the heavenly Guest, and have then grieved Him 
as a guest, as a friend. The connection of the 
words is very suggestive. They stand in the 
midst of exhortations concerning speech and con- 
cerning unlovingness. Notice this reading : " Let 
no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, 
but such as is good for edifying as the need may 
be, that it may give grace to them that hear. 
And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." So we 
may grieve the Spirit by our words. Jesus laid 
great stress on speech as an expression of the 
life. " By thy words/' he said, " thou shalt be 
justified, and by thy words . . . condemned." 
Saint Paul's teaching here makes it very plain 
what kind of speech a Christian should make use 
of. He should not use any corrupt speech, which 
scholars say means rather worthless speech — like 
10 



1 46 OUR NEW EDENS 

the idle words which the Master condemned. 
What a mass of worthless words, good for noth- 
ing, empty, vain, inept, doing nobody any good, 
are spoken every day ! These grieve the Spirit 
of God, for our wonderful gift of speech is given 
to us that with it we may bless the world. 

Saint Paul tells us what kind of words Chris- 
tians should speak — such speech as is edifying as 
the need may be, that it may give grace to them 
that hear. Good for edifying ! That is, every 
word we speak should be such as will give help, 
put cheer, hope, or encouragement into others' 
hearts — put touches of beauty on others' lives. 
Are the words we speak these days of this kind ? 
Do they give inspiration, encouragement, strength, 
uplift ? Do they impart grace to those who hear 
us ? This does not mean that all our words 
shall be solemn and grave. Sometimes the best 
way to minister grace to a friend is to make him 
laugh. Humor has its place in Christian speech, 
and without it religion would fail ofttimes in its 
most helpful ministry. But if our best work 
always is to make people happy, what is required 
is that all our speech shall minister grace to those 
who hear, make them better, truer, stronger, 
braver, more helpful to others. There are words 
that hurt tender hearts, and when we hurt a 



s 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 147 

human heart, we hurt God and grieve the Holy 
Spirit. 

There are other words which tell us further 
how the lesson applies in our daily common life. 
" Grieve not the Holy Spirit. . . . Let all bitter- 
ness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and rail- 
ing, be put away from you, with all malice : and 
be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, for- 
giving each other, even as God also in Christ 
forgave you." 

We do not know what we are doing when we 
let bitter thoughts stay in our minds, or when we 
speak unkind words which give pain to those 
who love us. We are desecrating the temple in 
us in which the Holy Spirit has His home. We 
are hurting, grieving God, for we must remember 
that he who wrongs one of Christ's own, wrongs 
Christ Himself. Let us cultivate love and all the 
gentle expressions of love. Let us remember 
that God is love — the Holy Spirit is love. 
Therefore only love can please Him. 

We may think we have the Spirit in our hearts 
because we are busy in Christian work, or be- 
cause we are sound in doctrine, or because we 
give money to good causes. Let us know also 
that anything that is unloving in thought, or feel- 
ing, or disposition, or act, hurts God, grieves the 



i 4 8 OUR NEW EDENS 

Holy Spirit. Let us seek to make our hearts fit 
temples for the heavenly Guest by putting out 
all that is not loving, and welcoming love into 
every nook and corner of our being. 

But there are other ways of grieving the Spirit. 
His work in us is to glorify Christ. He does 
not glorify Himself, but, keeping Himself out of 
sight, never calling attention to Himself, He 
pours the light upon the Redeemer, that we 
may see Him, that He may become glorious in 
our sight, 

Then the purpose of the Spirit in us is, further, 
to have the life of Christ reproduced in us. That 
is, all the Spirit's work in us is intended to further 
our fashioning into the likeness of Christ. We 
think sometimes that we are like Christ because 
we have good manners, are polite, courteous, 
kind, obliging, or because we are enrolled as 
Christians in some church. These are proper 
marks of a believer in Christ, but there are other 
marks. " The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, 
longsuffering, . kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 
meekness, self-control." Each one of these 
words stands for a quality that is Christlike. 
Think of what love is as Christ interpreted it, 
lived it out ; what peace is ; what joy is ; what 
longsuffering is; what meekness is. Think of 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 149 

the way Christ went through this world, loving, 
patient, forbearing, enduring. He knew the hurts 
of love. We think of His cross as the highest 
expression of His love, the mountain-top of His 
revealing of God. So, no doubt, it was. But all 
His life, even in its smallest acts, was likewise a 
manifestation of God. 

We are not called to go to Calvary to die 
again — there is no need for this; but we are 
called to die on the cross, nevertheless, to die 
continually. Loving as Christ loved is a daily 
dying. Men must see the cross in our conduct, 
our disposition, our treatment of others, our 
service, our spirit of self-denying and sacrifice. 
Whenever we fail in thus honoring Christ we 
grieve the Holy Spirit. When we act selfishly 
instead of unselfishly, when we are false instead 
of true, when we show pride instead of humility, 
when we think of our own interests before the 
interests of Christ's kingdom, when in our rela- 
tions with others we show an unchristlike temper, 
we grieve the Holy Spirit of God. 

The great need of the Christian Church to- 
day is not fine buildings in which to worship God, 
not more members, not greater wealth, not larger 
institutions — what the Church needs first and 
most is holy life, more Christlikeness in its mem- 



150 OUR NEW EDENS 

bers. We should seek to live our faiths. We 
should bring our living up to our professing. 
We say we are Christians — well, let us be Chris- 
tians. 

il So, he died for his faith. That is fine — 
More than most of us do. 
But, say, can you add to that line 
That he lived for it, too ? 

" In his death he bore witness at last 
As a martyr to truth ; 
Did his life do the same in the past 
From the days of his youth ? 

" It is easy to die. Men have died 
For a wish or a whim — 
From bravado or passion or pride ; 
Was it harder for him ? 

" But to live — every day to live out 
All the truth that he dreamt, 
While his friends met his conduct with doubt 
And his words with contempt. 

" Was it thus that he plodded ahead, 
Never turning aside ? 
Then we'll talk of the life that he led— 
Never mind how he died." 

We grieve the Spirit of God when we get 
absorbed so much in this world that we lose 
interest in the heavenly life. A Jewish legend 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 151 

affirms that if an angel spends seven days down 
on the earth he becomes gross and opaque and 
loses the power of his wings. It is true of the 
human followers of Christ, that if they stay out 
in the world a little while, aw r ay from the pres- 
ence and fellowship of Christ, they will become 
earthly, losing their spirituality, their heavenly 
mindedness. They will also lose the power of 
their wings and be unable to fly Godward. 

There are many strong words in the New 
Testament concerning the life of the Christian — 
the life he ought to live in this world. We are to 
be in the world, but not of it, said the Master. 
We are to be filled unto all the fullness of God. 
Our citizenship is to be in heaven. We are to 
walk as children of light. We are to be holy as 
God is holy. We cannot live the heavenly life 
here unless we are always in communication with 
heaven. He who does not abide in Christ can- 
not bear fruit. " Apart from Me," said Christ, "ye 
can do nothing." Seven days in the world away 
from Christ would leave us gross and opaque, too. 
Indeed, one day without prayer and communion 
with God will dim the luster of our light and rob 
us of power. The only way to maintain the glory 
and the vigor of our spiritual life is to be always 
under the influence of the Spirit of God, 



1 52 OUR NEW EDENS 

Another of Saint Paul's expressive counsels 
concerning the Spirit is given in another of his 
epistles : " Quench not the Spirit." The Spirit 
is a fire, the fire of God burning in us, on our 
heart's altar. This holy flame is a Divine lamp, 
fed from heaven. Quench it not. Do not put it 
out. Do not let it burn low. Do not resist the 
Spirit's work in your heart. Let the fire burn, 
and burn up all that is not good or worthy in 
you. Let it purify you, cleanse your life, till 
nothing unholy remains. Let it kindle your 
whole being until your life shall be indeed a 
burning and shining light in the world. 

" Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." The 
word " grieve " is the same in the original as is 
used in the gospels when it is said of Jesus in 
Gethsemane that His soul was exceeding sorrow- 
ful, y So we make another Gethsemane in the 
heart of Jesus, make Him exceeding sorrowful, 
even in heaven, if we do not do those things that 
please Him, if we disappoint His longing for our 
holiness. 

How can we live so as not to grieve the Holy 
Spirit? Think what it is the Spirit seeks to do 
in us. His mission is to bring us back to God, 
to undo the work of sin in us, to teach us the 
will of God and help us to do that will. He 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 153 

comes into our hearts when they are full of evil, 
and His work is to cleanse us of the evil and 
then to fill us with good. He comes to cure us 
of all bitterness, anger, and resentment, and to fill 
us with love. He comes to bring heaven down 
into our hearts and lives. 

What now is our part ? It is to help by not 
hindering. It is to yield our hearts and lives to 
the Spirit, to obey His voice, to accept His 
guidance. It is to open every part of our being 
to His influence, not keeping Him out of any 
room or closet. 

It is a wonderful fact that we can have all the 
power of God come into our lives, if we will, that 
we may be instruments which God can use. An 
organ has a capacity for sweet music, but while 
it is closed there is no voice in its pipes — it is 
dumb. The organist might sit down at the key- 
board and run his fingers over the keys, and 
there would still be no music, only a clatter. 
The organ is dead — it is not of any use. It 
needs the breathing of the air through its pipes 
before its mechanism can be effective. Only 
start the motor and have the air blowing 
through the organ, and then, when its keys are 
touched, they will respond in sweet harmonies. 
We are like organs — we have all the powers 



154 OUR NEW EDENS 

necessary for noble living. We are meant to 
make sweet music in our living. We have 
reason, conscience, will, affections, intellectual 
faculties, education. Yet until the breath of God 
blows upon us we are only organs mute and 
dead. The best player can bring out no heavenly 
music. But when God breathes upon us and we 
receive the Holy Spirit, then music will pour 
forth from our lives — the music of joy, peace, 
love, holiness. 

One of Frances Ridley HavergaFs poems tells 
of an yEolian harp which a friend had sent her, 
telling her in a letter of the sweetness of its 
tones. Without reading the letter through Miss 
Havergal took the harp in her hands and began 
to thrum its seven strings, thinking that was the 
way to use it. But she could bring out no 
music. She was disappointed. She then looked 
at her friend's letter again, and learned that the 
harp must be put into the window, under the 
sash, if it would give forth its music. She 
obeyed the instructions, and then the wind began 
to blow over the wires and the room was in- 
stantly filled with sweet strains. 

Our lives are like iEolian harps. Skillful 
fingers on the strings make a kind of music. 
Human love brings out much that is beautiful. 



GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 155 

But it is only when the breath of God blows 
upon our lives that heavenly music comes from 
them. Shall we not yield all our being to this 
blessed Holy Spirit ? We must receive Him or 
He will not come into our hearts. We can keep 
Him away if we will. Let us not grieve Him by 
resisting Him. Let us keep no door shut upon 
Him. Then, let us obey every command and 
impulse of the Spirit, doing always the things 
He bids us do. Let us follow all Divine in- 
spirations. 

The true problem of Christian life is not 
merely church-membership, not merely activity 
in Christian service, not merely good living — it is 
to bring all the powers of the body, mind, and 
spirit under the influence and the sway of God. 

" Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh ; 
Teach me the struggle of the soul to bear, 
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh ; 
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer. 

u Teach me to love Thee as thine angels love, 
One holy passion filling all my frame ; 
The baptism of the heaven-descended Dove, 
My heart an altar and Thy love the flame." 



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